


tenterhooks (feel so good)

by Lindra



Category: I Remember You - Fandom, Korean Drama, 너를 기억해 | Hello Monster
Genre: Abuse, Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Coercion, Discussion of childhood sexual abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Relationship(s), Incest, Learning to Person, M/M, Mentions of canonical animal harm, References to Suicide, references to sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2018-04-14 20:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 206,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4578345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindra/pseuds/Lindra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time is going to run out. But not today, and perhaps not next time either. If he can hold onto him then it will be okay. Right? Even if he doesn't remember yet. Even then.</p><p>(Also known as "that AU where Min is Hyun's port girl and it changes a few things".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fojee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fojee/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Brother Mine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4461599) by [fojee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fojee/pseuds/fojee). 



> Spin-off with permission from fojee's excellent Brother Mine and picks up where that left off. 
> 
> For this AU I'm following Cha Ji-an's timeline of Hyun's activity in Korea in episode 11 since I figure she would be the one to know, so it starts out about four or five years before the show.

Min stops him and gives Hyun his number when Hyun leaves, tells him to put it in his phone. It's a stupid thing to do, but -- just in case.

Hyun holds his phone between two fingers afterwards, examining Min with a gaze uncomfortably sharp. "I don't spend a lot of time in Korea."

"That's fine," Min says. "I am a busy person."

***

A year passes. There are cases to open and close, depositions to write, clients to visit. He takes tea with Prosecutor Shin and the senior partner of the firm he works for. Joon-young visits him at his studio, cooks dinner and ruffles Min's hair, speaks to him as though Min isn't a profound disappointment. 

But Joon-young is very good at waiting, always has been, and Min supposes one more year makes no difference to him.

Not that he won't be waiting forever -- the aches of not having his hyung have eased, now that he has had his hyung, and the knowledge of something Joon-young doesn't know makes him smile, makes it much easier to evade when Joon-young's gaze goes suspicious.

Min is special to him, always has been, and it's easy enough for Min to use that against him even as Joon-young knows he's doing it, knows he isn't answering questions he really should answer if he wants to keep Joon-young sweet. But even Joon-young is someone that wants to be touched, and Min… well, if Min thinks of Hyun, that's not any different from usual.

***

Hyun comes back in February, a chilly bright morning, and that afternoon he calls Min. He asks if he remembers him and Min would very much like to laugh. Of course he remembers.

He invites Min to his hotel room, promises dinner in the restaurant if he arrives early enough. The prospect of eating with him is nearly frightening, but Min agrees nonetheless. Driving to the hotel, handing his keys to the valet, arriving in the restaurant to see hyung stand as though he has been waiting for Min, of all things -- it is utterly surreal, dreamlike. 

"I had a friend look you up before I called you," hyung says, eyes running over the wine menu. "Lawyer's an interesting career for someone of your preference, isn't it?" 

He has not been asked this so directly before, but he knows what not to say. "I do have the skills. I trust my clients and do my job the best I can."

Hyun doesn't seem too convinced and Min wonders where he went wrong in his answer. It's perfect, isn't it? Ah. Yes. Too perfect.

"I didn't investigate you," Min lies, and sips water, waves off hyung's attempt to let him have a say in their drinks. Min will go with Hyun's choice. Of course he will. "So you know mine, but I don't know yours. Then, what do you do?"

"Ah. I lecture in criminology." Hyung lifts an eyebrow and sits back. "I get a lot of invitations to guest lecture and sometimes I agree. It's not too bad to be back in Korea for a while."

Min nods without looking when the waiter offers him a glass, and when he tastes it is a deep, crisp rose, the sort that is a flawless compromise between a sour white and a dry red. Not bad, for not knowing Min's tastes. It's not a bad guess. Wrong, but … it's not bad wine, either, and he cradles his glass with all of Joon-young's -- and thence Sun-ho's -- manners.

His hyung looks softer somehow with his hair spiked up in front. Perhaps it's that it is late evening and Min is tired from a long workday, the morning starch gone out of his shirt, and perhaps it is that Hyun stood when he saw him as though he anticipated and remembered Min. Perhaps other things, too, but he finds he wants to talk. He wants to talk to his hyung. 

"Ah. One of those. I defend, you discover. Sometimes people like you give court testimony that makes it harder for me. Sometimes I make their lives harder," lifting a brow at Hyun, "and question their credentials in court."

Hyun hitches the side of his mouth, a very Joon-young expression if there ever was one. "I don't give court evidence. It's not interesting."

"Ahh," Min says. "Your bent is research. Anatomical?"

Hyun tilts his head, shoulders comfortably squared in his chair, wicker lathered with veneer and nowhere near as beautiful as the play of light on his throat. "I didn't invite you to eat so we could talk about work."

Min feels his eyes hood with amusement and allows them. Joon-young says the same thing when he invites himself to Min's studio and Min asks too many questions, which is sometimes any at all past _did you bring condoms_ and _shall I_.

He supposes this really is a similar sort of situation. 

"Did you just want to look at me a little longer, then?" Min pinches his lip between his teeth and releases it, rather than draws it forward the way he would if they were alone. They're in a very nice hotel indeed, hyung must be as wealthy as he looks, and likely the staff will choose to ignore obvious oddities but Min does not want to be memorable tonight. He doesn't want to be the polished accessory two steps behind and one to the left of a chaebol. He wants to be with his hyung.

"Why not?" Hyun runs his eyes over him, nearly smiling, and Min swallows. So direct. Hyung is so direct, and Min likes it, craves it with a helplessness that feels both horrible and intoxicating.

Min sips more of the wine. It's really not bad wine. "Keep this up and I'll start to think I'm the main course," he says, trying to bring it back to something a little more like flirting and not this direct, self-confident approach that reaches into his belly and wraps its fingers around all his wants. It's better to flirt instead of other things he could say, like _let's go to your room_.

Hyun shrugs refusal, eyes on his. "You are. This is the appetiser."

He smiles, and looks down, and this time he does draw his lip between his teeth. Hyun wants him -- his brother wants him, and he flushes. "Things must be very different where you usually live," he says instead of stupid, reckless, flagrantly tempting Lee Joon-young's-discovery things like _the bathroom's over there, kiss me_. "This isn't a bar."

Hyun's mouth curves into something more like a smile, if it wasn't so watchful. But he is Min's brother; Min cannot imagine him being anything less than watchful. The most important thing is that he is watching Min. "You like it, right?" 

The question is pro-forma, and they both know it. "I do," he confirms anyway, and leaves it at that. 

Min watches hyung drink, watches his throat and the purse of his lips around the rim of his glass, and he has no idea what he orders when the server asks, really, something he usually likes but that's about it. It could have been crab or some sort of noodle dish or both for all that he cares.

They eat, and Min admits to having an artistic streak -- actually, he admits to an art minor, but it's about the same thing for a criminal law major -- and Hyun tells him about a classmate of his, a man now a gallery owner, and though he does not say the name Min knows it, Na Su-bong, knows it because he has watched his hyung all this time. He has watched him.

But now he can watch, can watch him watching Min, can look at him looking at Min, and his attention after all this time thrills him to his fingertips. He lets himself loosen more than the wine can strictly explain. It has only been two glasses, after all, but he feels expansive enough to have had five. Once was explainable as fate. But twice -- twice is nearly a pattern.

 _Hyung_ , he wants to say. _Hyung, look at me, look at me. Hyung, look at me._

And Hyun doesn't know, but he does. He does, he is. He is.

"You're happy to see me," Hyun says when they're standing in the lift, not quite shoulder to shoulder, but close enough that the gap is a temptation.

Min chuckles. "It was very good last time," he says lightly.

"For me too," hyung nods.

But there is one thing, one question burning, and when they reach Hyun's floor he reaches to stop the doors and does not exit. Hyung turns about with a raised eyebrow, both hands in his pockets, and Min asks. "Is this also to forget bad memories?"

"No," Hyung says. "This is because I want to."

Relief blossoms in his stomach, and he smiles and follows him, follows his brother to his room, and when he is pressed down against a couch so richly stuffed it may as well be a bed, he yields easily, so easily. How can he not? It's hyung.

"This time," Hyun says, pulling Min's shirt out of his waistband and spreading his palm over his hip with such confidence that Min's head spins at the touch, "I want to fuck you."

"Yes," Min says, and he does not scrabble at the buttons of hyung's shirt, but it is a near thing, only long practice with Joon-young's work shirts letting him undo them all without tearing them. Hyun holds still and steady above him, allowing him.

Once Min has his shirt open he jerks Min's tie off his neck and drops it to the floor. The warm-burn aftermath of silk sliding hard against his collar makes Min shiver. "Now you."

"Not much to see," he says, obeying nevertheless, and Hyun stares down at him, the intensity of his focus making a liar out of Min.

He was right, last time, Hyun is more of a top, and Min twists under him, offers himself four, five different ways to make it last, prolonging the press of Hyun's skin, the fill of his cock in him, before Hyun shakes his head and braces an arm across Min's collarbone, pressing him back into the arm of the couch, and comes in him, eyes shut and his mouth open, his breath panting hot on Min's cheek.

Hyun braces him, still, when he reaches for Min's cock, and Min shivers, tilting back his head, watching hyung as much as he can through his lashes and the tight, choking anticipation that makes tears slip out of his eyes and blur the sight of his face. Min kicks the cushions when he comes, twists his face against the back of the couch and whines, then sags.

The lift of his forearm feels like abandonment, and Min swallows, heaped and tired, waiting for -- something, for hyung to pull out and go to the shower and leave him alone to gather himself, for hyung to pull out and put on his clothes and leave, for hyung to pull out and throw Min's clothes at him and make him leave.

But hyung doesn't do any of those things. Hyung doesn't draw out. Hyung finds Min's hand and links their fingers and kisses him, brushes his tongue over his mouth, lets go of his hand and thumbs tears off Min's cheeks. Min misses a beat at first, surprised, but his eagerness for him is only sated, not extinguished, and his greed for hyung's taste, the smell of his skin, shows easily enough.

He's used enough to Joon-young's inspecting stare afterwards, the careful roundness of his eyes, that he doesn't even mind when there's only thought on Hyun's face when he pulls back and gets up, fingers pinched either side of the condom to keep it on and then to roll it off, tying it with a quick two-handed maneouver Min doesn't quite bother to track. 

Hyun walks across the room to pour water from a pitcher, the back of his shirt rucked up, his sleeves crumpled up around his elbows, and Min watches the bareness of his feet and hands, how he balances back on his heels and rounds his calves. He pictures biting the soft skin behind his knees, pictures running his hands up his legs and putting his mouth on his cock. He thinks about it, about going to him.

He doesn't hide his face when Hyun turns around, and hyung smiles. "Staying the night?"

"If I was an acceptable main course," Min counters with his chest a cavern of anxiety. His hyung is good at this, he can still feel it in his body, but Min has only ever been with Joon-young before, and Joon-young has preferences that might not match hyung's. He doesn't know what Hyun would like better. He doesn't know how to be perfect for his hyung, and the longer he lies here, the longer he lets himself recover his breath, the more he worries that perhaps he has made mistakes.

Hyung shakes his head. "You're staying," he tells him, and takes off the shirt. It leaves him naked, and Min stares without shame as he walks toward the couch and Min, his gaze very hot when he stops and looks down at Min.

He sits up a little, folding a leg under himself, and the openness of his body where Hyun was inside him is so very pleasant. Hyun was here, it says, and Min likes it.

Pressing his mouth to his cock is sinfully easy, and hyung's hand is so strong and good in his hair as Min licks him at his leisure, learning his shape against his lips and inside his mouth, the growing weight of his cock. He tastes like latex and semen and Min doesn't mind either; he can smell his sweat, the warmth of his body against his nose when he takes him deep. It feels good, stretching his mouth and throat the way hyung stretched him.

Hyun pulls him off with a fist at the crown of his head just as he's at the point of thrusting deliciously into his mouth, and Min makes an embarrassing noise. "Is something wrong?" he asks the hair dusting Hyun's thigh, wary of looking up. Joon-young likes the way Min looks when Min has been sucking him, but he doesn't like it when Min looks up himself, prefers to pull his head back for him, so far back it burns to breathe, and fuck his mouth like that.

It's a loss again, not knowing what hyung likes. 

"Hygiene," Hyun says, tone very practical, but the way his hand cards through Min's hair is not practical at all. "You don't know my STD profile."

"I don't mind," Min says truthfully, too truthfully from the way hyung's hand slackens, and he dares to look up, realising that he has definitely made a mistake. Hyun looks narrow now, narrow and speculative. "I mean, I don't mind, because I know I don't have any, and there aren't that many visiting criminologists." He tries to lighten the tone a little more. Hyun's regard is so, so heavy. "I could find you and sue for compensation." It'll never happen, and they both know it. Min falters.

Hyung touches his throat. "You could stop talking," he suggests, and Min catches on when his cock presses against the hollow of his collarbone, red and dark, lifts a hand to wrap it around him and stroke. Hyun's hand slides into his hair again, tilts his his head back, and Min looks up at him, glad when he doesn't press his thumb to his neck or tighten his hand. It makes it easier to show his want, to part his mouth and search his eyes over hyung's body with a play at showing the eagerness he feels.

His come on him is wet, splattering and gooey, and Min hitches delight. He can't imagine liking it from anyone else, but the feeling of ownership, of being owned by his hyung, possessed -- wanted -- yes, he likes it, he likes it, enough to moan and bend his head to try to inhale the smell of his come, fill his mind with it.

When he looks up there is a suspicion to Hyun's face, a thoughtfulness.

"I should shower, right?" Min asks quickly, and gets to his feet with awful gracelessness, his shins numb from sitting on them for so long. Hyung doesn't give him space and Min has to clamber up against him to manage it, their bodies brushing hard, sweat sticking.

Being taller than Hyun is so strange, and Hyun bends to kiss his shoulder, licking his own semen off his lips when he draws back. It's so sexy that Min stumbles, thoughts full of doing something with his hyung, with the taste of him, if he can only kiss him. But Hyun leans back and runs his hands over Min's shoulders, drawing his crumpled, frankly ruined shirt off his arms and down to the floor. "Go wash. I'll call room service."

***

"You don't act like we've met once," Hyun says from the bathroom doorway. He's holding a glass of red wine; Min heard the door while he was washing, heard him exchange words too polite for him not to have gotten dressed again. His shirt is grey and snug, it suits him, and the wine is too dark for it not to be a personal choice of Hyun's, rather than a compromise. Min wonders how it tastes. Joon-young always prefers champagne, tastes metallic and dry afterwards.

Min shrugs carefully, wary of getting shampoo in his eyes. "I probably thought too much about last time," he says, and lays out a string of half-plausible excuses and hopes they imply what he wants to imply without it being said directly. "I'm busy and I don't top much. It was different. You were different. Most aren't that direct about it, even in a place like that." He rinses his hair. He's not the only one that remembered last time. And Hyun kept his number. "How long are you staying in Korea?"

"I thought a few days, but I could stretch it to a week," Hyun says. "How busy is busy?"

"Not that busy," Min says, and he turns, hair wet, and reaches out a dripping hand. "Can I try some of that?"

For a moment hyung stares at him, with something wide and puzzled behind his eyes, and Min feels his stomach roil. Not like this. Not like this. "I don't usually like red," he continues, trying to cover the pause for both of them, trying to pretend there aren't goosebumps on his outstretched arm. "But I'll taste it."

"Ah. Of course," and Hyun holds it out to him, lets Min lean out of the shower and sip, holding back his hair with one hand. "Sorry," he says, after Min's grimaced at the searing dryness of the wine and gone back to scrubbing at the hair at the nape of his neck. "You just reminded me of someone."

"Someone special?" Min asks casually.

"Mm. Anyway, I'll go to bed. Come over when you're done."

Min dries his hair with a dryer he finds in one of the cupboards and runs it over his body, a trick he learned in his childhood with Joon-young and Joon-young's inability to stop draping wet towels on chairs and only thinking to wash them when they mildewed. Since he has no clothes he walks out in a bathrobe so thick and plush it might as well be a blanket, his hands snuggled into the cuffs.

'Going to bed', for his hyung, apparently really means 'sit in bed with a glass of wine and catch up on paperwork', same as it does for Joon-young, and Min curls up on the covers beside him, aching with familiarity. "Your lecture?"

"Tomorrow morning." He pauses. "Ah, you drove, didn't you?"

Min picks up on the meaning easily enough. It's no trouble for someone as smart as his brother to pick up on Min carrying his keys into the restaurant, but it does mean that Min has to be as careful with his details as he is around Joon-young. 

Tomorrow after work he'll paint, likely, sit in his studio and paint and think about Hyun and paint some more until all he's thinking of is colours, and if he's thinking of colours when Joon-young comes by Min will have a better chance of pretending he's only pulled another all-nighter. Joon-young has some blind spots; his easy acceptance of the narrative of Sun-ho, lawyer by day and artist by night, is one of them. 

"I can drop you off if you tell me where to go," he offers.

"Thanks," Hyun says absently, and Min watches him until he falls asleep, drunk on the sight of his brother, his breaths and the way he clicks his pen when he's thinking. It should be annoying, but it's soothing instead.

When he wakes up to his chest being stroked he only sighs, too comfortable to mind just yet. It doesn't feel like Joon-young, though, and he opens his eyes to see hyung looking down at him, hair wet and smelling like the same hotel soap Min used last night, in a bathrobe of his own. 

There were two on the hook because this hotel is a very nice hotel but also a very discreet hotel, and forcing a guest to ask for a second bathrobe is not the soul of discretion. He must still be asleep to find that funny, but it's not just that, it's also the sight of his brother. He likes waking up to him very much, and a smile comes very easily.

"You slept a long time," Hyun tells him. "We should have breakfast and go."

Min wets his lips and manages to make an agreeable noise or two, too fascinated by the sight of hyung to really care. And perhaps, also… Min stretches, lifts his arms and bends his knees, displays himself in an imitation of lingere advertisements, a flap falling to the bed to show the whole of his bare thigh.

"We should be quick," Hyun says, his eyes not on Min's face at all. "If we don't want to be late."

Min's smile doesn't dim at all, and he reaches for the tie of his robe.

***

They're quick, but Hyun is late nonetheless. He turns and bends to look through the passenger window when Min lets him out in front of the campus building, materials tucked under his broad arm to stop them flying away.

"Call when you want," Min tells him, lifting his finger from the button to lower the window.

Hyung rubs the curve of his shoulder. "Busy, huh."

"I am," Min says. "So you should call first."

Hyun laughs. Min watches him walk away, hand on his neck. That's where Min bit him this morning, bit him until he yelled and came, and it feels very satisfying indeed. Like he is carrying a bit of Min with him, a piece of him given freely to be tucked under a collar like a secret. Hyun's secret. 

Hyung's.


	2. Chapter 2

Hyun doesn't call the next day, but he does the one after that.

Min and Lee Joon-young schedule their days off as closely as they can, and sometimes they don't overlap directly and sometimes they do. There's nothing special planned for this one today, but he contemplates trying to tell Joon-young that he's busy when Joon-young knows full well that Min absolutely is not busy at all and decides against it.

"I've a painting to work on," Min tells him. "I can call you back?"

"Sure," Hyun says.

***

They have time, today, and after filling his fridge and freezer and making him breakfast Joon-young opens him slowly, with gloves and enough lubricant to make even the rubber mat under his hips slippery. It's relaxing in the habit of it, the ritualised progress of touch, and clothes off, and more touch, and more, until Min is naked and massaged into boneless dozing, more like a stretched-out bit of flesh than the vague sensation of personhood he usually feels.

It's so, so good to give up even the vestiges of pretending, and Min relaxes into Joon-young's predictable progression, able to think of absolutely nothing at all but the gloved fingers inside him, half-asleep with the deep contentment of knowing precisely what is happening to him and will happen.

Joon-young is slow about it, so very slow, and Min is near true sleep when Joon-young pats his buttcheek with a finger. "Are you awake?"

Min hums agreement. He is. Technically.

"This will be cold," Joon-young says, like he always does.

Min hums again, too relaxed and sleepy to bother bracing for what he knows will come, and the ease of the metal dildo inside him only makes him sigh and flex his fingers. Joon-young taps his butt again, and Min nods. "I'm fine," he mumbles.

"Good." Joon-young gets up, changes his gloves, and Min lies there enjoying the chill inside him, how it weighs him down. Anchors him like hyacinths and the smell of paint. The smell of his brother's cock, and he hums again for pleasure this time.

They do it like this, most of their off-days, with Joon-young's thighs spread, one along the back of the couch and the other hooked over an armrest, Min's head turned and his body propped on his elbows, his mouth lazy on his cock and Joon-young reaching to fuck him with the upturned handle of the dildo.

Sometimes Min wonders what will happen when Joon-young becomes less flexible through his hips, but it's not really his concern. He's seen Joon-young's meditative exercise. Joon-young will walk like a prison gymnast until he dies.

Min contemplates that, how he might die, and between that and the soft sounds Joon-young makes it's an easy orgasm against the rubber, how it alternately clings and slides against his cock, lube spreading as he grinds down. It feels good, very good, and he pulls his mouth off his cock to groan against his thigh, showing Joon-young his face. Joon-young likes seeing his face when he comes.

"Good," Joon-young says, voice wavering, hot like the heat of the dildo in him now that it's taken his temperature and then some. Min used to be so proud of himself when he made his voice crack like that, and he's still a little proud. Not everyone can make Joon-young lose his composure like this.

His fingers go back inside him after Joon-young gets up, and Min sighs, stretched around the dildo and his fingers, and sighs again when both are pulled out and replaced by his cock. Latex, lube, latex. Joon-young never forgets either, and Min is vaguely aware of making noise, more occupied with shifting to cant his hips and settle his arms under his head.

"You know the windows are open," Joon-young says, but he sounds pleased.

"I do," Min confirms unnecessarily, and stretches, yawns. It's a good rhythm, it always is, and he settles to bask in the physicality of it, the empty-headed pleasure of Joon-young's cock in him and the kisses he presses to the back of Min's neck and shoulders with enough tooth that it's easy, delicious, to squirm the way Joon-young likes most.

They clean up afterwards, though Joon-young gives him the easy task as usual and leaves Min to tidy himself. Meanwhile he takes care of the rubbish, both plastic and biological, and scrubs the mat in Min's kitchen sink while Min looks over his shoulder, airing the bathroom before he goes back in to brush his teeth. He has to be quick and lukewarm when they're sharing. Joon-young loathes a misty bathroom and there's no point in Min ruining his mood unnecessarily.

The mat is starting to crack. One of them will have to buy another soon.

Joon-young says as much, and when he's finished he presses Min against the counter and looks at him, lets Min see that he's searching his face for something.

Min tilts his head. "What?"

"You know your brother's back in Korea," Joon-young says, hands either side of Min's hips on the counter. The air smells like the vinegar solution he uses to clean the dildo, sitting in a bucket by Min's feet. For a moment he thinks of kicking it. "Don't you?"

"Yes," Min says, and draws on the fresh memory of being empty-headed flesh. It's easier to lie to Joon-young if he isn't thinking of lying. "I saw him."

Joon-young nods, looks away, looks back with fresh intensity. Joon-young sometimes reminds Min of a trapped animal, but he'd never appreciate the comparison. "Will you send a message?"

"No," Min says. "It's not fun if I give it all away."

"You've given nothing," Joon-young counters.

That stings, unexpectedly. He's given hyung so much. Hasn't he? Didn't he? "It's not clever to be too obvious."

Joon-young looks nearly kind, gentle when he thumbs water off Min's jaw. "He gave you to me. Why would he think of something he discarded? Unless you push him."

That much is obvious to Min already. Hyun doesn't think of him. Hyun might be reminded of him, might pause long enough to make Min worry, but he doesn't think about him at all. He knows. But there is a fiction to maintain and Joon-young is not part of it, not this time, for all that his question burns in Min's throat. "He might."

His smile is patronising. "You mean, isn't it better this way?"

Min doesn't kick the bucket after Joon-young goes to shower, drawing his shirt over his head, but it's a near thing. Instead he finds the crack in the mat, digs in his fingers, and pulls it apart in wet, crumbling pieces, then dumps it in the bin. Joon-young can get them a new one himself.

Joon-young calls him childish when he sees it, in the calm, placid way that means it will hurt if Min resists. Min doesn't.

***

After Joon-young leaves for the day Min changes the bedding and opens a window or three, and turns all the paintings that are even vaguely to do with his childhood to the wall. It's most of them, in the end, and the ones left are abstracts or commissions, or have more to do with life as Joon-young's, and those he covers so his signature doesn't show. It's profoundly risky, but he wants to see hyung so much that it'll have to do.

He calls Hyun. "I have time now."

Hyun takes a taxi over to his address, and Min watches him get out of the car, waves from the room where he paints. Hyun looks around at the multitude of paintings turned to the wall and raises an eyebrow.

"I have moods," Min says. "They didn't match. Tea?"

Hyun takes a seat at his kitchen counter, cradling his mug in one hand. It still smells like vinegar but he put away the dildo before he called and the kitchen is cleaner than it was the last time Hyun was here. Even when Joon-young is annoyed he cleans up after himself. Especially when he's annoyed.

"You're good," he says. "Just a minor?"

"It's a hobby," Min says. "I wanted it to stay that way. The schedule of a full-time artist would be even worse." He considers his hyung, the things he still doesn't know about him. "What's yours?"

His hyung lifts his mug in something like a salute. "Cleaning."

Min doesn't repress his smile, though he hides it behind the rim of his mug. "Really?"

"Really," Hyun says. "I'd offer to clean, but it looks like you did a good job already."

"I didn't. My uncle was here," Min says. "He looks after me. Fills my kitchen," gesturing at the fridge. "Cleans my bathroom."

"That's good of him," Hyun says.

Min supposes it would look that way. "You can clean my bathroom next time if you really would like to. You'd probably complain less than he does."

"There are other things I'd rather do here," Hyun says, sardonic and serious all at once. "But I'll consider it."

Min flushes. "No, you don't have to. That was a joke."

Hyun shrugs a shoulder and sips, and Min reluctantly lets it go. Perhaps it wasn't such an enormous misstep. "So, day off?"

It is midweek and Min's already established that he has a lot of demands on his time. It's a fair question. "Yes. I schedule them once a while so I can catch up on things. It's not fun to just come home and sleep."

He nods. "It's like that when I'm teaching. Being here is a good break." He speaks to the table, puts down his mug but doesn't let go of it. "I extended my ticket."

Something warm and wonderful and new splashes through Min's chest and shakes his fingers, and he presses them against the underside of the counter to hide it.

"Oh." Hyun's looking at him, his reaction, he knows he is, and Min manages to smile, the joints in his fingers bending backward with the force of his need to not show hyung how much this affects him. "It's good I have time, then. Do you..." He doesn't know what hyung likes. He still doesn't know. "Did you eat?" he asks finally.

"I could eat a little more," Hyun says, and they share one of the plastic boxes of bibimbap.

Joon-young would love to know that hyung was eating his cooking and complimenting it, Min thinks, and the secret of it, the knowing that he won't ever tell Joon-young about this, puts him at ease. He likes having a secret from uncle. He likes having hyung to himself.

His hyung seems more interested in him than the food, though, and afterwards Min loosely links his fingers with hyung's and leads him upstairs to the bedroom, kisses him, is kissed.

It's much more languorous this time, a slower burn, and Min takes the opportunity to touch him everywhere without shame, discovering the tackiness of his hair gel and his shaven armpits, the soft down in the middle of his back and the way his body hair roughens at the tops of his thighs and the beginning of his wrists. So much to learn about his hyung. So much, and he thirsts for all of it.

Min flushes when Hyun reaches between his legs and pauses with the whole of two fingers in him, slipping inside like eels in water. It feels so much more real without gloves, his sensations narrowing to hyung's fingers inside him. He can feel the curve of his fingernails, the groove of a scar on one of his knuckles.

"I got ready," he murmurs, looking at the wall with his face hot, and in a way -- yes. Yes, he did. Joon-young was readiness for this, for Hyun's body, Hyun's touch. Joon-young was always readiness, wasn't he? For this.

Hyun groans and gives him a kiss that is positively scorching, one of the most enthusiastic so far, and Min has a chance to note that hyung likes this, he will remember what hyung likes, before he melts into it with all his greed, curling his aching fingers around his arms.

He's sloppier this time, and certainly much rougher than Joon-young, but Min finds he likes the fraying of hyung's watchfulness where Min is concerned. He likes the uncertainty of whether he will press his hips very hard, or if his grip will tighten this thrust or the next, whether his mouth will find his throat or his shoulder or his lips, if he will moan loudly or softly.

They lie together afterwards and Min truly is basking, body thrumming with happy release, and the joints of his toes hum when he stretches and relaxes. The neighbours probably think Min is some sort of gigolo and all his careful establishment of Jung Sun-ho, a dependable young man too busy to be asked any inconvenient questions, is utterly ruined. Min finds he doesn't actually care.

Hyun gets up, stretches and puts on his underwear. "I'll wash." Min wallows in the warmth hyung leaves behind for a little longer, then forces himself up and changes the linen. But the windows are open and it's too cold to walk about naked. He puts on a shirt long enough to hide his cock and goes to find Hyun, half-worried that he left.

He's in the studio.

For a moment Min thinks he's turned the paintings around, that this is it, that he'll have to ask Hyun everything that hurts, but Hyun only gestures to the easel, the one in progress, the one thinking of Hyun coming made easier. "It's interesting."

"It's a gallery commission," Min says. A commission with a brief both ridiculously specific and ridiculously vague. Isolation, loneliness, no nudity, no portraits, but there must be also be some sense of hope, and the style is not impressionistic, but not modern, but not entirely realism either, and no surrealism is allowed. But he's worked with this gallery before and knows the director's preferences.

So he's painting the side and stoop of the house he first lived in with Joon-young, and it's nearly complete. The house itself was ramshackle and small, full of plants inside and outside; it took years for Joon-young to stop putting at least one plant in every room, the brighter and greener the better. The stoop was covered with them all along the railing and either side of the side door, and the cement where Min usually sat before and after school was cracked through. 

He has painted what he remembers, and in what he remembers the paint is peeling; the windowsills bulge rottenness from monsoons without repair; the ground is wet and the leaves are so very bright, and it was where he waited for hyung for four years before they moved to the first in a string of forgettable and regrettable flats. He's familiar with the house, that stoop. The waiting.

But Hyun is not. Hyun will never know. Hyun gave him away.

"I grew up there," Min says, and sits carefully on the chair, looking at how it is, how it should be, how it could be taken to a finish. "It's where my uncle and I lived."

Hyun doesn't ask, but Min sees the question on his face and shakes his head. "No, no parents. Just him and me. Anyway, it fits the brief and so far they like the progress. It should be fine." He picks up a brush, puts it down, and then turns to him. "I don't feel like painting right now. We could do something."

In the end they go for a walk around a nearby pond, but first they kiss and kiss again, first in the studio, and the kitchen, and on the couch, and up against the wall just inside of his front door. Their hands brush when they walk, and sometimes Hyun's hand swings further and brushes his thigh. Min keeps his smile to himself.

Hyun pounces as soon as they're back inside, pressing him against the door and putting his hands inside Min's sweats. "Eager?" he murmurs, half-hard for him already.

"You know those pants show off your ass," Hyun says, with a smile like he's making fun of himself. "Take them off."

Min breathes a laugh. He does know. "I've been told." He obeys, sliding his thumbs into them and pushing them down, and that's as far as he gets before Hyun's dropping to his knees and shouldering his legs apart.

"You brought condoms?" he asks, weak with surprise, when Hyun fishes one out of his trouser pocket and rolls it on him. "We were just walking."

"Just in case I couldn't keep my hands off you," Hyun says, smoothing it with his fingers. "It was a near thing." The bold truth in his face, that rueful half-crook of his mouth, makes Min's knees shake.

"Please," Min moans, biting back _hyung, hyung, hyung_."Please."

They fuck, nap in the bedroom and fuck again. Min's about to settle into a blissful doze, exhausted by all the sex he's had today, when Hyun rolls away and says something about dinner.

"I do have food," Min says.

Hyun pats his thigh with such thoughtless comfort that Min both revels and resents him. "I'll make something."

Min sits in the kitchen in a jumper and those pants Hyun liked earlier, warming his hands with tea, and watches Hyun's back, how he moves about his kitchen with such ease.

It's like he belongs there. For a moment he pictures it, really pictures his hyung moving in to stay, living with him, being in his bed and reading while he paints, and they would pick up and drop each other off, and talk all the time about everything, and never stop touching each other if they could help it.

It's ... nice. It's a nice dream.

But it can never happen, for a lot of reasons, and most of them are Lee Joon-young and Hyun himself.

"I can feel you thinking," Hyun says without turning around.

"Sorry," Min offers. "Just ... thinking that you're probably someone with a person in every port, and I wouldn't mind being your Seoul person in the future. This suits me."

Hyun makes a considering noise. "You've got someone else, right?"

Min blinks. How -- oh. The condoms. Joon-young, being medical staff, steals them in bulk from the sexual education offices. He hadn't thought to separate a few from the rest. It hadn't seemed important. "We're not exclusive."

"I'm not looking for a long-term arrangement right now, but I'll think about it." He turns around, sets the pan on a trivet, looks at him as though Min would be wrong to be disappointed. Min's appetite sours. Too much, too early, isn't it? It hasn't been long enough. He's shown his hand and now he's at a disadvantage. But he wants his hyung not to leave, and if he can't avoid that, then -- then he wants his hyung to come back to him. He wants him to promise.

But he won't.

"It's ready," hyung says. "Eat as much as you want."

***

They're both too worn out for another round by the time the taxi comes to take hyung back to the hotel and honks for the second time, but it's not for lack of kissing or touching, and Hyun pulls away with a noise as frustrated as it is amused. "If I don't go right now I'm never going to go."

"Really?" Min blurts, and immediately knows he's said the wrong thing. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to put you off. It's just so good with you," trying to impress on him that he isn't desperate at all, it's just that Hyun is superlative. He has the distinct impression that he is failing miserably.

 _Why don't you recognise me?_ Min wants to ask. He's wanted to ask so badly all day. Joon-young's the one that had plastic surgery, not Min. Min didn't have anything. Min is still Min. He still has his own face, doesn't he? So why? _Why don't you remember me? Haven't we been close enough?_

"I'll call you," Hyun promises after a silence that is so long Min can't bring himself to look up.

"Okay," Min says, and startles when he's kissed, blinking speechless at his dark eyes when he pulls back just a fraction, their lips almost brushing.

"Don't look like that. I said, I'll call you."

Min smiles despite himself, despite the knowledge that hyung is leaving him again. "Then," licking hyung's taste off his lips, "you should go. So you can call me."

Hyun nods. "It was fun."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The trouble with a composure based on feeling nothing is that when you do start feeling things it all goes to pot.

The next time Hyun calls Min has been having one of those days where nothing quite goes right. The wrong photocopies, one of the witnesses had their name entered incorrectly from the start and now can't be found, Prosecutor Shin insists on him coming along to morning tea with the other interns, his supervisory junior partner is still sick in hospital with flu, and the pile of paperwork in his inbox is consequently as tall as his head. His officemate can't help either because his pet junior isn't sick.

He's annoyed.

Hyun's name on his phone only makes him slightly less annoyed.

"Jeong Sun-ho," he says, glib with his borrowed name after wearing it for nearly fifteen years.

"I'm on campus," hyung says. "Do you have time for lunch?"

He doesn't. He really doesn't. "Yes. Where shall I meet you?"

The secretary blanches when he leaves. "What should I say?"

"I'm meeting a lucrative client for lunch," he says smoothly. "Blame it on me."

She scowls. "I will."

Min sketches her a salute as he steps into the elevator.

***

Hyung looks kind of annoyed too, and Min slows his steps, sits across from him with careful poise. It feels a little like being called to sit with a cup of tea before Joon-young fixes that look on him and asks him what his reason possibly could have been and then Min has to search through everything he did since the last time Joon-young called him to figure out what he could possibly be talking about. 

"It's nice to see you again," he ventures.

"Do you know anything about this?" He turns his phone and shows Min a picture of a signature. A very familiar signature. His.

Min blinks and still Hyun doesn't say any more, observes him as closely as a drunk Joon-young. So hyung must still not be certain, or hyung still hasn't considered all the possibilities. It doesn't look like the background is any of his paintings and he didn't sign the one on the easel yet so it can't be that either. Perhaps Min has not been discovered as Min. "Why are you asking me?"

"It was on your palette. More importantly, the person whose signature this is," Hyun says through his teeth, everything about him deliberate. Min has the impression that if they weren't in a public place, he'd be shouting, and that's why they are in a public place to begin with. "Do you know them? Did you steal that palette? Borrow it?" 

Min could tell him. He could tell him right now. He could tell him everything. He could tell him who hyung's been fucking. Who's been fucking Min.

"It was a gift," Min says.

His jaw works. Hyung is not as subtle as Joon-young, that much is for sure. "Was their name Min? Lee Min?"

He shakes his head. It's the first time he's heard his name, his true name, in nearly twenty years, and from his hyung's mouth it makes him waver enough to look too long at his face, the aftermath of his _Min-a_ still curving his lips. 

Min could paint him like that, and everyone would think he was looking for a lover, or had just heard terrible news of someone he loved, or both. The disbelief in his eyebrows, the slight flare of his left nostril a touch larger than the right. He could paint him, and everyone would assume he was looking at someone else.

Min's name was definitely not Min when Joon-young gave him that palette, and he clings to reason. Joon-young… things are too complicated to risk for a stunningly stupid, simple thing like telling his brother more hints than necessary just to see more of his pain, just to see if he really means the way he still says Min's name. "Why?"

"He's my brother. He's missing. He's been missing for a very long time." Hyun spreads his hands on the tabletop. "I thought -- I thought, when I saw the signature, perhaps you knew something."

Hyung is actually right. Min does know something. Min knows everything.

But he didn't know he was missing. "Missing?" he echoes.

"I believe he was kidnapped," Hyun says. "He disappeared when we were children. So if you know anything, anything, please tell me."

Kidnapped.

Hyun thinks he was kidnapped? But Joon-young always said it was convenient, that he was in Hyun's way, that they made a deal, that Hyun wanted to be rid of him. Joon-young always said, implied, such reasons.

Min stares at him, confused. "I don't know what I can tell you," he says when the intensity of Hyun's reddened eyes is too much to bear. "I don't know."

"Anything, Sun-ho," Hyun says, and nearly crushes his hand when he takes it. "Tell me anything."

The false name jars and disappoints him enough that whatever thoughts he had of letting Hyun have his implications in turn, clues toward any truth, become ash. "It was just ... a gift," Min says. "I'm sorry." He means it. He's sorry Hyun believes him.

Hyun lowers his head, swallowing, and lets go of Min's hand. "It was probably too much to expect," he mutters.

Min doesn't like to see him this way. So defeated. "Let me buy you something," he says. "I still have forty-five minutes. Let's have lunch."

Hyun nods, head hung heavy between his shoulders, and sits back in his chair as though nothing's just happened. "All right. Let's do that."

They eat. It's very quiet, and Min finishes his lukewarm coffee, takes a deep breath. "You were on campus?"

"I had another lecture this morning. Said they'd fit me in for a second one if I was interested." Hyun looks at his mug. "You're sure you don't know anything about Min?"

"It was a gift," Min says, words pulled out of him by the way hyung says his name. Min, with that little diminutive -ah. He remembers loving that about his hyung. Min still likes it. Even if he can't have his own name, Hyun gives it to him. Even like this. "He was ..." 

How was he, during those years in school when he'd grown old enough to resent more than he feared? What would he have looked like? He's never thought about it like that before. 

"He was quiet, smart, angry." It's easier to describe himself as if he's summarising a client's chance of summoning character witnesses. "He didn't have friends."

That much is true. It took a long time for Min to learn about how friendship worked. He and Joon-young came to understand the transactions of it together as Min grew up. The appropriate times to return calls and send messages. The ways other people showed closeness and thought, like notes and one-line emails and letters and postcards. It's all a series of deals, back and forth, back and forth, until some deals no longer have to be said out loud, and that unsaying is what people mean by connection.

He mostly compensated for it in school by failing to care, failing to fail academics, and learning very quickly that a veneer of occupying his body as Sun-ho was the best tool to avoid any talk of failure at all.

"We lost contact a long time ago," Min says. That is also true. Min has been Sun-ho for so long. He's not sure he ever really knew who Min was. Min has always wanted to be with hyung, to be like hyung. Min has never wanted to be Min, not really. Someone with hyung, someone hyung wanted, was always what mattered. His name could have been anything. Still could be anything, as long as Hyun is in front of him. 

Hyun nods slowly. "That's ... more than I've heard in a long time. More than I've ever heard." He looks so shaken. Min both glories in it and hates him for it. How can he sit there listening to Min spinning him Sun-ho's lies and swallow it like this? How can he sit there and listen and nearly bawl over Min and not _recognise him_? "How long ago?"

Min shrugs. "About fifteen years. I moved away and we weren't close, so that was it. I think it was somewhere in Busan? I'm afraid I don't remember any more clearly than that," he tells him, contorting his face into sympathy.

He wants to scream. He's right here. Min is sitting right in front of him.

If he's so guilty, if he's so agonised and desperate, why doesn't he recognise him?

Min puts his hand on hyung's, rubbing his thumb against his skin in a bid for closeness, and stands up. "I should go back to work, but if there's anything I can do --"

"When do you finish?" Hyun interrupts, looking at the hand Min held. There's a calculation in him. Perhaps the detail about Busan was too much. Too tempting.

"Tonight? I'll probably get home after eleven." Min checks his phone. Fifteen missed calls and messages. Sixteen now. "If you're still awake then, I can call you."

"I'd like that. Thanks."

This isn't how he wanted hyung to want him. He doesn't want something as simple as touching his hand like that to work on him, too. Hyung's supposed to be stronger than that, isn't he?

"You can tell me what to do," he says finally, raw and earnest with the truth of it. "Please take care of yourself."

***

He goes to see Joon-young around seven that evening. The timing gives him a few hours to compose himself. The secretary wants him to promise to come back, and he agrees easily since he means to anyway.

They're both working late and Min pauses in the doorway to watch him. His uncle, his lover, his teacher, the closest thing he's ever had to a friend. 

"There you are," Joon-young greets, washing his hands in a sink so stainless it reminds him of the way Joon-young handles scalpels. There's a corpse on the gurney, covered in a sheet. The chest is wrong. Ribs crushed. Could be a fall, could be an unsuccessful attempt at CPR. "I was about to leave. Is it important?"

"You could say that," Min says, and Joon-young invites him through to his office, sits with paperwork and those glasses on his face. They make him look like Min's father and Joon-young knows Min doesn't like them but he's wearing them anyway. He doesn't, most of the time. Probably still cranky about the mat. He's never approved of needless waste.

Min doesn't sit, stands with his cup and saucer rather than sink into that absurdly soft chair. He needs this tangle of confusion to help him say the words. "Hyung," Min starts, falters, then tries again. Joon-young hasn't looked up, but his pen isn't moving. "Did hyung really give me to you?"

"How else would it have been?" Joon-young asks, and he stands up, moves close. Too close if he were anyone else but Min used to this and the way he reaches to touch Min's free wrist, hidden from the door by their bodies. It's comforting. Joon-young will hide him, but not from him. "It was convenient for everyone. He's never looked for you. Isn't that so?"

"But he protected me," Min murmurs.

"And still," Joon-young says, eyes focused in the distance on something that is not Min, "you were in the way." He meets Min's eyes. "That is how it is."

"You're sure," Min says, lifting an eyebrow.

Joon-young tilts one of those looks at him. "That's not what you want. It's something else."

"What am I to you?" Min blurts.

Joon-young frowns, fingers circling his wrist, thumb over his pulse. "You should know. Don't you?"

Min knows.

But his glasses are Min's father's glasses, and with them, the way he looks at Min -- Joon-young looks like their father.

Min remembers their father looking at them both and leaving, leaving, leaving. Leaving Min in dirty clothes, leaving him to eat out of the jars his father forgot open on the counter, leaving him in front of the kindergarten without lunch. Leaving him to wait for hours until he came to pick him up after three calls in a row from the grumpy teacher, leaving him in a house empty but for a hyung he wasn't allowed to see anymore, leaving him alone with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Leaving. Dying.

Joon-young knows he hates those glasses. He feels sick inside. All he can think is _hyung wouldn't do that_ , and he has no idea how he can be so certain.

Min's heart feels fast and uncertain. Joon-young's face changes. "Sun-ho," he says.

"It's nothing." Min shakes free and tries not to sweep out like a melodrama, tries to walk out as though he isn't tangled up, down, and sideways, but Joon-young's chuckle floats after him and for a moment he doesn't know if anyone ever wanted him at all. It feels like a world ending right under his sternum, crushed as that corpse.

***

He's so distracted from work by the welter of tumbling feelings that he ends up getting home at ten past midnight. After he takes off his shoes and tie and locks the door he fumbles for his phone. What are hyung's sleeping hours, anyway? Is he a morning person, like he was back then? Does he go to bed early of his own free will and wake up and make breakfast at dawn if it's only breakfast for himself?

There are so many things he wants to ask him. Questions with missing answers, like whether Hyun is still awake after all.

But it seems he is. He doesn't sound like he's been asleep. "You're home late."

"Just got in," Min answers, light-headed with relief at hearing his voice. Duty to hyung and Joon-young's instilled paranoia force him to his feet to turn on the lights and do a general check of the house. "How are you?"

Min is still very bad at feigning concern so it's a good thing he's actually concerned this time.

"Fine," Hyun says.

"I was trying to think, at work," Min says. "What else I could tell you. But there's nothing. I really didn't know him that well."

No bugs, no wires, no hidden people or objects, no explosives. Nothing added, shifted or taken. No windows opened by force.

"It's fine," Hyun says again. "At least someone knew him."

Everything in the fridge looks the same, even down to the sparkling water fill level. He takes one, opens it, tilts the bottle to check for residue on the sides and bottom. Nothing.

Probably safe to drink, then. He waits until the impulse to ask _even if that someone is Lee Joon-young?_ stops constricting his throat, then dares to wet his mouth. "I don't know what I can do to help," Min confesses. Hyung, or himself, or anyone. But especially hyung.

Hyun sighs. "Let's talk about something else."

Min listens to his breathing and wonders what to say. What do people say in situations like this, late at night on the phone with one-night (three-night?) stands? How can he possibly distract himself from feeling so off-kilter? What do normal people do about this? Ah, perhaps that might work. "What are you wearing?" 

That gets him a chuckle, and Min pauses and sets down the bottle. He's not sure how to interpret Hyun's amusements yet. "Really?" Hyun asks, and he actually sounds a little better. Less likely to fall apart into calling his real name. "You're insatiable."

"I don't know what else to say," Min says, relieved again, and wanders to his bedroom. He regrets the necessity of switching the phone to speaker while he takes off his clothes. Hyung's voice should be just for him. "It's late. What were you expecting?"

"Well," Hyun says, the sound of him low and comforting, "I'm not actually wearing anything."

"Oh," Min says, and then he pictures it, properly pictures it, really thinks about it, his hyung naked on that hotel bed, naked on the phone with him, talking to him in all that skin, wearing only the sound of Min's voice against his ear, how it would look and feel to paint it and be able to look at it as much and long as he wanted, and feels his face go hot. " _Oh_."

So that's why people say it in dramas. He wondered about that for years. It seemed so pointless and silly to care what someone was wearing while they talked to you. Now he knows. It's on the tip of his tongue to thank Hyun for teaching him something again, for taking care of him even in a little thing like this. 

"That backfired," Min admits instead. Hyun laughs this time, and it sounds real. Deep and good, and Min wishes he'd thought to record it. Perhaps he can make hyung laugh again and keep it next time. He would like that. 

"What about you?"

"I'm changing," Min says, looking at his sleep clothes, neatly piled on his chair. "I could be naked too," he offers. "It's not too cold."

Hyun hums. "When do you get up?"

"Six," Min says. "If I were a sensible person I would hang up and go to sleep."

"I am a sensible person," Hyun says, "and I also need to be up early. We can do it next time. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," he says to the beep of hyung hanging up on him with a promise of next time, that there will be a next time, and he goes to sleep naked beneath two blankets, feeling them on his skin. Does hyung sleep without clothes, too? Does he like it? 

Min drifts asleep, thinking of hyung's body, hyung's touch and Joon-young's voice.


	4. Chapter 4

Hyung doesn't contact him at all the next day, and then the next.

Just when Min is beginning to wonder if he'll see him at all, a text comes in at exactly half past seven. _My flight is tomorrow. Come when you're done._

It's such an open invitation. So open. Hyung's hotel room, and that bed, and hyung. Those bathrobes. Perhaps they can have room service, and eat together in them like people who like each other.

"Who died?" his officemate asks. He's such a forgettable person. Some other partner's pet intern, and his father is a lawyer with the firm, but Min knows he won't make the cut at the end of the year. He's just too ... inoffensive, and his father isn't even a partner.

But as far as officemates go, it could be worse. He could have the one down the hall that snaps gum. Min looks over, putting his phone down on a pile of priority papers. "What?"

"You look like that when we get murder suspects," his officemate says, and yawns so hugely Min has to actively resist the urge to poke a pen into the maw of his throat just to see what would happen. "All happy, and ... happy."

"I'm not happy," Min lies.

"It's too early to smile like that." His officemate slumps down in his chair, closing his eyes. "Wake me up if you see Partner Jang."

He gives him a few minutes to start snoring, then puts a pencil into the corner of his mouth, satisfied when it hangs like a cigarette. "I wasn't smiling," Min tells his slack face. He opens the blinds so everyone can see him drooling on himself and goes back to work.

He disputes the charge that he had anything to do with the pencil successfully enough that his mischief only earns him the errand of sorting out everyone's lunch order. Min takes the opportunity to arrange things specially so his supervisory partner, a puffy-faced, hacking mess freshly out of hospital, gets his favourite comfort soup.

In return he's let out of work at eight. It feels sinfully, intoxicatingly early. He has hours and hours to do whatever he wants, and he knows precisely what he wants to do. He wants to be with hyung.

"Go away," his officemate complains. "Stop being smug at me."

Min soothes him with a fresh cup of coffee from the good machine two floors up. 

***

He calls hyung from the car on his way over. "I'm off work now."

"I was just about to eat," Hyun says. "Should I order some for you?"

"Yes. I won't take long."

***

They're sitting across from each other in the hotel room, finishing dinner, when Hyun puts his fork down on his plate and says, thoughtful: "Your background record doesn't say anything about being raised by an uncle."

Min slowly chews and swallows his bite before he speaks. "It would be embarrassing if it did."

The original Jung Sun-ho was the child of a chaebol's mistress's second daughter, his father himself the comparatively poor son of a chaebol's mistress and an entirely unacknowledged, valuable asset. Of course his record is flawless.

"Ah." Hyun sips red wine. This time he got white as well, for Min. He doesn't know if to appreciate the thoughtfulness or not. "Which conglomerate?"

"Yang," Min says. "They're the ones trying for the Chinese import market at the moment, but that's all I know. I don't have anything to do with their affairs."

Hyun nods and seems to make a decision. "One more question," he says.

Min dares to look a little bit exasperated. He wants to play with his hyung, test him, push him. It's the least his hyung deserves. "Ah, really?"

"It's just one," Hyun says, holding up a finger and shaking off the beginnings of a smile. Too bad. "Just one. Did Lee Min say anything about his family?"

That sobers Min, fast, and he looks at the smeared remnants of sauce on their plates. Hyun doesn't eat the fat. He supposes Hyun must have been very well taken care of without Min.

It stings enough that the words slip out. "His brother gave him away."

Whatever playfulness there was on Hyun's face disappears. "No. No, that's not true. That's not true," and he looks at Min, at his face and then through him as though he knows who he is.

Min swallows fear. Does he wants Hyun to know? He can see how he could come to realise it, if Min just says one thing, or does another thing. He can see it, laid out in front of him, but in the path there is Joon-young. Joon-young, and he leans on the memory of his hand warm around his wrist the way a weathercock is tethered by a pole. 

"He believed it," Min says, flat. Min still … believes it. Doesn't he? No, he should. Hyung might put on a pitiful face now, but he didn't look for him. He didn't look. He didn't ever look.

No. He won't tell him now, won't allow any more hints, any more structures that might hint at truthful puzzles. He wants one more time, just one more fuck, one more night, and he wants that more right now than he wants hyung's pain. It's too late for hyung to ever make it up to him. To ever fix anything. To make it that he never gave him to Joon-young -- that can't happen, not anymore. 

Turns out murder can in fact be averted with sex. He thinks of the contortions it would take to get away with writing that up as a rehabilitation plan and stifles a snort, turns it into a transition from delicate topics like Min (right here), Lee Hyun (right here), and Min's whereabouts in relation to Hyun (right here).

"If you wanted to talk to someone about it, I can recommend a good counsellor," Min says brightly. "But that is not what I am personally here for. Right?"

"Right. It's not." Hyun finishes his glass. "Do you want to top?"

He doesn't splutter his mouthful back into the glass, but it's a close thing, and he looks up at Hyun's distant face, his loosely-clasped hands across his spread knees. The picture of a heavy, heavy weight on a heavy, heavy mind.

 _Bad memories_ , hyung said last year, when he wanted this. Now again. The wine sours in his mouth and he swallows with difficulty. This won't do. "Forget it," Min says. "That's not why I'm here either. Unless it is."

Hyun sighs, shoulders sagging, and with them Min's stomach drops to his shoes. "Give me half an hour," he says. "I'll be better then."

"Do you need me to leave?"

"No, you don't have to do that. Just entertain yourself."

Min settles onto the couch with his phone, kicking off his shoes and drawing up his feet. "Fine," he says, and puts a cushion under his head and opens his email.

It's almost peaceful, waiting for his hyung. He hates waiting for him but it's easier when Hyun is right there in the room where Min can look at him, watch his fingers outline phrases on pages and tap the keyboard he's plugged into his laptop. The screen is angled so he can't see and Min doesn't particularly care. He'll read hyung's book when it's published anyhow; his advance agreement was a decent contract as far as deadlines go. Hyung will make it with time to spare.

Min has himself another glass of wine, pours Hyun one of the red, leaves it on the nightstand by his elbow.

"Thanks," Hyun murmurs, not bothering to look up, and Min takes the opportunity to stare at the curve of his shoulder, the broad slope of his back. "Ah, a few more pages," reaching to pat Min's thigh, and Min is so surprised by hyung reaching for him first that he allows it. "You're greedy."

"Because I want to fuck you," Min says matter-of-factly.

Hyun's ears go red and Min smirks to himself at his own success, goes back to the couch and drapes himself on it for attention, the way he does when Joon-young's drunk enough to stare off into space longer than usual. Joon-young likes his legs and back and face the most, sometimes prefers his neck if Min's wearing a lower-cut shirt. Hyung doesn't seem too different so far, though he usually puts his hands directly on his hips, not the back of them like Joon-young. With that in mind Min settles onto his side, arranging himself to show his cheekbone, his shirt tugged in sharp definition over his waist and hip.

"You did that on purpose," Hyun says a little later. Min's finished out his own email and is halfway through the general-purpose mailing list for this year's interns, confirming and adjucating schedules and answering questions. In theory someone reads the messages, but more often it's down to Min or the gum-snapper down the hall to actually answer them.

He wouldn't do it, really, but Joon-young's advice to make sure everyone he meets owes him something has always held him in good stead.

"I did," Min says. "Is it working?"

"Yes," Hyun admits, and shuts the laptop after a moment, setting the keyboard aside. "Come here."

This is what Min wants. He wants to hear his hyung call to him, tell him to come close, that he wants him. He doesn't turn off his phone -- Joon-young will never let him hear the end of it if he drops out of contact -- but he does put it in the pocket of his jacket and put his tie in the other pocket.

"Come _here_ ," Hyun insists, leaning back and patting his thighs. 

Ah, hyung wants it like that. Min tugs at his trousers and kneels carefully on the couch, his knees either side of Hyun's hips and his ass resting on the tops of Hyun's thighs. Hyung's shoulders feel strong and delicious under his fingers. He wishes he could enjoy them without worrying about whether he's going to burst a seam, wishes kissing hyung at this angle didn't feel like making a pretzel of his neck.

Hyung grabs at his legs for a minute, then grunts and lifts Min up. "Ah, this isn't working. Get off."

Min obeys, scowling, and starts to strip, working at his belt and trousers and stepping out of them along with his socks. His shirt takes longer. Shirts always take so long. Too long.

Hyung's already naked and walking to the bed when Min looks over his shoulder and he forgets about the buttons and just stares. Hyun isn't lean like Min, but he's broad and solidly fit, with wide thighs and shoulders, and he looks -- smooth, and touchable, and there is so much of him. Not the memory of hyung, small and having to climb onto a stepstool to do dishes, but this instead, alive and breathing and here, a man. When he turns Min sees his cock is already thick.

Hyun catches him gawping and chuckles as he pulls back the sheets. "You really do like this."

"I do," Min says, and finishes the last button, stripping off and putting it over his jacket. He fishes a handful of condoms out of the inside pocket. "Were you thinking of something in particular?" He doesn't answer. Min goes to him, comes to a stop close enough that he can and does reach down to circle his fingers around his cock. "What were you thinking about?" He squeezes. "For this."

"When I asked if you wanted to top, I meant it." Hyun looks up at him, eyebrow cocked. "Do you?"

Min's face heats. "Isn't it a long flight back to America?"

"I want to," Hyun says.

***

They do it twice, that night. The first is slower, with a condom over Min's fingers after Hyun insists and enough lube to make work for the maids tomorrow, with kisses to Hyun's throat and chest and stomach, with the flat of his tongue against that vulnerably soft, fatty spot just above his cock. He works him open until Hyun's fingers in his hair, pulling and stroking and carding, become a fist and his voice becomes a plea.

The second time an hour or so later is rougher, with Hyun sprawled half on his side, his cheek to the sheets as Min pushes three fingers in. The pile of condoms and hospital packets of lube is starting to dwindle, but they should have enough.

Hyun hums. "You're prepared."

"It's your last night," Min says. He draws out his fingers, leisurely working them inside the condom to make up a loose pyramid of joint and bone, and pushes in again, hard to the knuckle just for hyung's gasp. "That's worth a little planning."

It amuses him to seem calm and controlled, to lead the progression of things and arrange hyung how he wants while Hyun lets Min pull him apart and make him party to criminal acts he has no idea of and asks Min for more, more, more. Min isn't the greedy one, he decides. Definitely not. Hyun is greedy. His hole is greedy and his hands are greedy and his tongue is the greediest of all.

"Get in me," Hyun says when Min breaks off kissing to draw in a few undignified whoops himself. So greedy, his hyung. So greedy. He kisses like he's devouring Min, like he wants to drown him, and Min feels as though he would let him. He would let him, wouldn't he? He would let him. How would hyung drown him? Gently? No, his hands would be firm, firm as they are when he reaches back to grab at Min's leg and pull it over, like he can force his cock in if he just tugs hard enough. 

Hyung would be firm and sure, and he would hold him down. But would he bring himself to watch Min's last struggles? Could he?

Min likes to think his would be the murder hyung remembers.

Hyun's knees are shaking. "Sun-ho. Fuck me."

"Yes," Min says, and Hyun groans when Min bites him all over his shoulders, avoiding his neck and catching thick folds of skin in huge bites to worry between his teeth and drool on as he fucks into hyung, eyes shut tight to forever keep the sound of their bodies together, joined at the hip, joined and joining and joined again.

"I have a business-class ticket," Hyun mumbles afterwards, sprawled, flanks heaving. He looks like an animal dominated, and Min licks the half-rings of the bites until Hyun's back twitches.

Min presses his body close, his cheek against the blade of his shoulder. "Lucky you," he says.

"Yes," hyung agrees into the bedding, hilariously vehement, and Min kisses him, kisses him again and again until Hyun lets himself be convinced into trying to coax a third round out of their tired, sweaty bodies.

***

"Min," Hyun calls in his sleep. "Min."

Min looks over from where he's lying in one of the bathrobes, reading a novel off the shelves, graciously provided by the hotel and as dull as the colour of the carpet.

Hyung looks afraid, his hand clenching. "Min."

"If you care that much," Min says, the words feeling distant, pulled from a place that is not quite himself, "then why did you abandon him?" He pauses. "Me."

" _Min_ ," distressed now. "Min, where are you?"

He closes the book and puts it down on the bed, turns over to roll against him. "I'm here, hyung," he murmurs, reaching to cup the damp heat of his skull, shivering with goosebumps under his fingertips. "I'm here."

"Min," desperate and distressed, so full of need that it feels like a file being dragged down his chest, opening him up and making him four years old, listening to his hyung cry in the room he wasn't allowed inside. He tried to sneak in once, and their father caught him with a terrible look as though it was all Min's fault everything had gone wrong and slapped him. 

Their father shouted sometimes but hyung never let him shout at Min. But hyung wasn't there, and their father shouted until Min cried, and hyung wasn't there. Hyung was in the room Min couldn't go to, and then their father went in and Min was left alone.

"I'm here," Min tells hyung, and kisses his cheek, his lips. "I'm here, hyung. I'm here."

"Min," hyung says, half-opening his eyes, and he looks at Min with a pale face heavy from sleep and tight with nightmare. "Min…?"

Min stares back at him, all of his ready lies mired in the sudden parch of his tongue at the sight of Hyun looking at him like this, as though he sees him, knows him. As though he _recognises_ him, would truly recognise him if only Min says yes, or gives him just a few more seconds --

"You were dreaming," Min says hastily, leaning to turn on the nightlight and get away from Hyun's confused eyes. "Should I get you some water?"

"Oh. Sure," Hyun mumbles, and drops his face into his hands.

Min puts on a sympathetic face when he comes back with the water. "It sounded bad."

"Yeah." Hyun sits up, blanket falling down his back, and gulps down the entire glass, holding it out for more, and Min quietly complies twice before Hyun thanks him and flops down onto his back. 

He lies down next to him, not quite touching. "You looked strange," Min ventures into the quiet.

"I nearly thought you were someone else. It was just a dream." He rubs his hand over his face, sounding not nearly as convinced as Min would like. "What time is it?"

"Ten to four," Min tells him. 

Hyun puts his arm over his eyes. "Come here." Min goes to him, wondering if Min is for chasing bad memories again, chasing away the memories of himself, but all Hyun does is put his arms around him. Min stays awake long enough to hear his snoring before he goes back to sleep himself.

***

Min waits with Hyun for the taxi to take him to the airport. It's half-past five, still dark, the air freezing, and he suspects neither of them are at their best.

Still. It's nice to stand with him, shoulder to shoulder.

"I don't know when I'll be back," Hyun says. "At the moment I'm busy with writing, and then there's the adjunct teaching to think about. My publisher might arrange a book tour."

Min shifts his hands in his pockets to cover his exposed wrists with the edge of his jacket. "I'm taking the bar this year if I'm accepted as a candidate," he says. "Don't worry. I'll be too busy to pine."

"Good luck with that," Hyun says.

Hyun doesn't kiss him when the taxi leaves, but the secret brush of their hands as Hyun steps away, Hyun's fingers tangling with his and squeezing in a gesture just for them, tugs his face into a smile so big it makes his teeth cold. He's unprepared for Hyun taking a picture. "Why?"

Hyun puts the camera in his pocket. "For memories. So, next time," he says.

Hyung wants to remember him. Hyung.

"Next time," Min says, and wonders if this feeling is love.


	5. Chapter 5

Min doesn't dive into studying for the bar exam the way the other interns dive into soju when they learn they didn't make sponsorship, but he doesn't particularly care about trying for first place. If it happens then it happens, but the small burst of outside attention isn't worth it. The original Sun-ho was very clear about the fact that his family would really rather prefer not to be forced to care to any degree about anything Min ever does under the name Jung Sun-ho, including whatever he does with the studio that was the original's prison.

His job offer is all but guaranteed regardless of whether he places first or third.

Joon-young disagrees, says he wants what is best for him, says he wants Min to excel, says Min is more than capable enough and the automatic better offer given to first-place will outweigh whatever risk there is of the Yang family remembering a distant, unwanted offshoot.

It's an old argument, Joon-young trying to push him the way a parent would and Min resisting the very concept of someone who isn't hyung looking after him like that. It's an old, sore thorn in both their sides that Min just hasn't ever been able to let go of Hyun.

They aren't each other's everything, they haven't spent every moment of the past fifteen years together, but it's close enough that sometimes when they argue it feels like he's arguing with his other half, a mirror-man, and other times it feels like they're still in that car, Min in the backseat and driven to uncertain pastures by a man who refuses to let him out or explain himself.

Min isn't a child anymore and Joon-young often allows himself to be seduced when it comes to things that really aren't as important as urging Min's mouth back onto his cock. It's a much more effective tactic than throwing a tantrum or refusing to eat. Growing up is good for some things.

***

Joon-young marks two years as an assistant examiner a few months before Min takes the bar and with that comes a grant for a one-year forensic pathology honours program. 

Most of their time together in those months is spent in study with breaks for fucking and fresh air, and the lack of conversation makes Joon-young almost pleasant to be around, makes it easier to think of him as his true, remaining family. But he isn't. Not quite. Min's had Hyun now, had him, and Joon-young is just … different. Not bad, but different. More comfortable, more convenient. Safer. A little more boring.

"Why is it," Joon-young says, casual in Min's bed with a textbook facedown across his chest, "that they don't do it this way for all subjects? One class, one exam. It would be simpler."

"Metrics. And because," Min says lazily, stroking his shin with the ball of his foot, "a lot of people are stupid." Even the study group he formed with the others most likely to pass demonstrates that much. They waste so much of his time for nothing.

Joon-young sighs deeply.

"Exactly," Min says. 

He picks up the textbook again after a moment, bringing it to his face and squinting. "One of them was arrested today."

"The one with the widow or the one with the husband?"

Joon-young scribbles in the margin. "Husband. She chose the knife method, as you predicted." He turns his eyes to the ceiling. "I expected one of my colleagues to have more creativity."

"I didn't," Min says, testing his highlighter in a corner. "She's not you."

"A good compliment," Joon-young says, smiling. He refocuses on the textbook once more, sitting up and touching his tongue to his lips in concentration.

Once completed the program will cinch Joon-young's position as the current head examiner's successor and bump his salary to a more comfortable bracket. Those brats of his are expensive and the oldest one with a trust large enough to be a steady source of funds in the future is still only seventeen. 

Min understands all this. He understands the reasons. But he's jealous of the textbook, jealous that he's doing it for those brats and not for Min.

Sometimes Min wonders if he should do more than cut out articles about how expensive children are to raise and directly solve the problem, but he does have an exam to study for.

***

Min passes the bar.

He doesn't hear anything from Hyun. 

He tells himself he's not disappointed. Of course Hyun wouldn't be watching Min as closely as Min watches him; he doesn't know and he likely wouldn't pay him that kind of attention even if he did.

But it stings.

***

Min's income and expenses from part-time work as a paralegal theoretically have to satisfy the deeper background checks required to enter any kind of Justice Department position, but the career counsellor sees his family connections and sponsorship and tells him he'll do just fine. 

So when he gets a call from Sun-ho's half brother, the one with the family's real surname and with whom the original Jung Sun-ho shares a mother, he has no problem answering.

"You'll have to be my lawyer now!" Yang Seung-hoon laughs.

He's a lout and a drunk, but has some limited use as an object to draw media attention away from the corporate side of the Yang conglomerate. He didn't know the original Sun-ho before he got curious about his shunned little brother making public appearances, so Min can be to him as he pleases. There's something refreshing about someone so dim and needy as to take him entirely at his word. Especially in comparison to Joon-young. 

Joon-young makes manipulating Seung-hoon feel like twirling a crisp little pinwheel.

"I always appreciate it when you remind me of my aspirations in life," Min says, as bland as he can make it. Seung-hoon still doesn't understand sarcasm most of the time but he knows when Min means to be funny about his and Sun-ho's circumstances as the least-favoured sons. "What's wrong with Attorney Choi?"

"Ah, he's so stuffy. I can't do this, I can't do that. It was just a yacht this time. He should be lucky I wasn't at home. That would have been a real problem."

The yacht in question was worth, roughly, sixteen million won. After Seung-hoon got his hands on it, it was worth minus three hundred thousand won due to the scraphauler's fee. "You're right. They should be grateful you thought ahead."

"It's good to have a smart brother," Seung-hoon says. "The others don't talk to me."

Min turns a corner. Attorney Jang lifts a hand and gestures to his office.

"That's their loss, hyung," he says. "I think you're doing just fine." He nods to Attorney Jang, who gestures even more impatiently in return. "My boss wants to talk to me."

"Oh, really?" Seung-hoon laughs. "I'll have another bottle for you, then! Oh, yes, congratulations and so on."

"Do that," Min says. "I'm hanging up."

***

Attorney Jang is with Prosecutor Shin. Prosecutor Shin offers him a position as a rookie criminal defense attorney for the Department of Justice, working in a cubicle for the first two years and promoted to his own office after a review at the end of the second year, cumulative with and dependent on case performance.

Prosecutor Shin speaks to him privately about the need for clever children like him in the courtroom, people who can see the value of true justice and deliver it to the common people. 

About the fact that legal and police records can be altered or disappeared but no amount of power will erase Prosecutor Shin's memory for faces.

Min takes the offer, upgrades his phone along with his clothes, saves Hyun's number at the bottom of his contacts list, powers through his first few probationary cases, and waits.

He'll kill Prosecutor Shin if he ever finds evidence for his ridiculous attempts at intimidation, but not before. He's still useful.

***

Four months into Min's position as a junior attorney at the Justice Department's criminal defense building and still no word from Hyun. It's been nearly a year. A month ago Hyun accepted an invitation to a conference on Korean criminal policy starting this week. It's on his university staff website as a planned appearance, but whether he'll come is still in doubt. Whether he'll remember Min is another thing altogether. 

But Hyun took his picture, didn't he? No contact doesn't necessarily have to say much in itself. Joon-young also has pictures of children that he doesn't talk to for a long time, pictures that he sits and looks at, children that he remembers even when he doesn't see them. Joon-young remembers them with the pictures, all of them.

He has one of Min in there too, and the rare times Joon-young is too drunk to safely come to Min's studio and invites him over to his flat, the picture is also on Joon-young's kitchen table, lined up against the wall under his phone. Joon-young says it's so he can look at his face and think of him even when Min isn't there.

Hyun could remember him with the picture too, couldn't he? He could be thinking of Min, still. He could … actually not have forgotten him, right? He could. If Joon-young can do it, why won't Hyun?

That night his phone rings and he answers without quite thinking, propped on his shoulder while he types up notes. It's close enough to winter break that there's half the number of people in the office as usual and it's not too noisy to take calls. He dislikes standing outside in the cold just for a conversation that might take two minutes at most. "Jung Sun-ho."

"I'm in the airport," Hyun says, and knowing his flight lands today is so different from hearing his voice again. "Lee Hyun. Remember me?"

He had three candidates lined up to get hyung's attention if Hyun didn't call him, if Hyun abandoned him again.

But Hyun is calling him, talking to him. Being grateful for the barest minimum hyung could possibly do is so pathetic Min's skin crawls, and yet he is. He is grateful, and being someone Hyun calls from the airport makes him feel … special.

Hyung is here. Today. Hyung is here.

Resentment sticks in his craw and makes it harder to speak. But he manages. He doesn't want Hyun to hang up on him, to think Min doesn't want to talk to him. It would serve him right if Min didn't talk to him.

"Of course I remember you," Min says, juggling his phone to his other hand and abandoning all pretense of work. "Welcome back."

"I'm here for a conference, but I'll have some spare time too," Hyun says. "Are you busy?"

"Yes," Min says, and when a lead attorney walks in he crouches forward on his elbows. His screen won't hide him very well but he's prepared to cite every piece of paper he's processed today if it means he can talk to hyung a little longer. "I passed the bar a while ago. I'm an attorney now."

"I finished my book this year too. Both of our plans went well."

He can hear traffic on Hyun's end, the sound of a door and all that late-night noise cut off like a snap of the fingers. "Where are you going?"

"Hotel," Hyun says. "I don't know my room number yet."

"Text me when you know." Min smooths his cuff, thinking of seeing hyung again, indescribably thirsty for him now that he's within reach. Min could just … go. Go to him. Go and run to him and throw himself at him. He could.

Pathetic, pathetic, _pathetic_. Joon-young would laugh and call him a fool and worst of all he'd be right. Min musters a little pride.

"If you're not too tired," he says, attempting to sound arch and unaffected.

Hyun chuckles. "I am too tired. But if you want to come just because, we can do that."

He hesitates. "Just because?" Min ventures. It's not like him to be so unspecific. What does that mean? "Not for anything in particular?"

"Yeah. Just because."

It feels different. It is different, and it terrifies him. There's sex, and there's this. Min knows sex. He doesn't know what this is. "Yes," he manages to say. "I'm not sure when I can leave."

"Come whenever," Hyun says.

Half an hour later he gets a text. _4076_.

***

Min drives to Hyun's hotel at half past ten with the distinct feeling that he has swallowed an entire nest of wasps, buzzing about and piercing his insides, and it doesn't get any better in the lift and it doesn't get any better when he knocks on the door.

Hyun's changed his hairstyle, is the first thing he thinks when he sees him. Spiked up and thick. It looks soft. It suits him.

They stare at each other, Hyun in casual clothes, a cardigan that can't be less than ten years old and the kind of plain shirt that's sold in packs of three, and Min in his silk-lined suit and tie, pin on his lapel.

Hyung looks him up and down, eyebrows raised, and Min says nothing, heart too full with the sight of his brother so comfortable. Vulnerable. Like being trusted, like home. Like Hyun is stupid, so stupid, so fucking stupid, and so … necessary.

 _Are you proud of me?_ Min wants to ask. He wants to know, itches for it. _Are you proud of me, hyung? Would you be proud of me if you knew me?_

Hyun gives a nod and quirk of his lips that strikes Min like a bolt of approval poured straight down his throat, bracing and sour in his mouth, lingering with the strength of angostura bitters. "Attorney Jung. It suits you."

Min looks down and smiles, too overwhelmed with conflict to speak. He wants hyung to say it again. He wants Hyun to say it to him as hyung. He wants Hyun to realise. He wants Hyun to never realise. He wants Hyun, wants to be closer to him.

"Come in," Hyun says, and Min goes. It's warm, a little stuffy, and he takes off his jacket, hangs it over a chair. "You look a bit different. It's been -- a year?"

"Nearly. Ten months," Min says, and bites his tongue on adding the weeks and days. "Your flight went well?" 

"Yes, but we can talk about that later," hyung says. "For now, come here."

Min nearly laughs at the arrogance. His assumption that Min will is right, yes, but he might as well work for it after all this time and Min stays put. "Why?"

Hyun tilts his head. "You and that other guy … exclusive now?"

"No," Min says quickly. "We're not."

"So -- ah, I'm too tired for this," he mutters.

"Then what," Min says, with the wasps in his belly fluttering out of his throat all at once in a torrent thin and pinched and far, far too helpless, "do you want me for?"

Hyun frowns. "I called you because I don't want to be alone."

"Oh." Min has never been anyone's companion. Joon-young's ideal emotional support is a potted plant that can survive without being watered. 

"Why did you come?"

"You asked me to," Min says. He reaches for his tie. "Off?"

There's a long, sluicing moment of dread when he thinks Hyun is going to demand an explanation, going to pin him down with words and flay him until Min can't help but tell him everything just so hyung will stop hurting him. 

"All of it," Hyun agrees. He sits on the bed, sleeves drawn over his hands. "We can talk tomorrow. Not now."

Min undresses without hurry, using the time to compose himself. Hyun's eyes are not on his face, and the blatant way he looks at Min makes him feel a bit better about slipping and showing so much. At least Hyun still wants that. "To your taste, then?"

"You're breakfast," Hyun tells him, and yawns into his palms. "When it's actually time for breakfast."

In a strange way it seems Hyun wants him, or needs him a little. Not Min, specifically, but someone. Someone comforting and uncomplicated, someone Min can pretend to be just for tonight. "Go to sleep," he says.

Hyun takes off everything but his shirt and presses against him once they're in bed, a warm breathing heap stretched against his side in the dark. 

"Thanks for coming," he murmurs, sounding half-asleep, nearly drugged with exhaustion. "Just didn't want to be alone."

"You aren't," Min says. Hyung's hair is as soft as it looks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yang Seun-hoon isn't an OC; he's the killer from eps 1-4.
> 
> I don't know if it's ever addressed in the show, but on rewatching Seun-hoon and Sun-ho's relationship seemed even more intimate than it did the first time, very familial, so I got the idea -- what if the Sun-ho ID was literally familial to Seun-hoon somehow? 
> 
> Yes, I realise this is making a bowtie of the loose threads in those episodes and calling it 'the original Jung Sun-ho'.


	6. Chapter 6

Min wakes up at the predictably depressing hour of five in the morning and crawls out of hyung's arms to check his phone. A drunken series of texts from Seung-hoon bragging about his girlfriend, updates on files pulled from the department archives, requests to look into this or that. A text from Joon-young that he'll be out most of the day. A voice message from the supervisory attorney scolding him for leaving without notice and another from a name he recognises as one of Joon-young's criminal acquaintances, asking to be let off an assault charge.

He forwards the second message to Joon-young and calls the supervisor. Even at this hour she's at work; Min knows for a fact she stashes a camp bed under her desk.

"A personal matter came up," he tells her. "I'm very sorry."

"Let me guess," she drawls, wintry. "A personal matter, meaning you won't be on time either."

Min pauses. Sometimes the expert guesses of the older attorneys feels like being in a building full of apprentice Joon-youngs. "That might be so."

"I expect a full summary of the Oh Tae-bong case by the end of tomorrow," she says crisply. 

Min doesn't want to do that. No-one wants to do that. Even she's been putting it off for weeks. Losing a defense is one thing, but proceeding forward from an accidental death in custody isn't a thing anyone wants to touch lest mishandling sinks their career. Then again, if he can do it well it may give him a good reputation for handling things others find difficult, and he does like murder cases. "Yes, ma'am."

"Have fun with your girl, but don't forget the important things." She hangs up.

Her timing is good, since Joon-young picks that moment to call. Min answers, eyeing Hyun in the bed. This might be a harder conversation to explain if Hyun overhears it. "There was a request from country police. I'm in a police van at the moment."

Min knows how much Joon-young dislikes vans. Especially as a passenger. So for him to be seconded, and not worth finagling his way out of it: "Someone important?"

"From a good family," Joon-youn says, voice full of that something which isn't quite humour but appears whenever the subject of family comes up. Min wonders if the police officers know just how close they are to death. Probably not. They'd never have got into the van otherwise.

"Ahh. Like yours?" Min offers, conscious of Hyun beginning to stir in the bed, a foot kicking out under the blankets. 

Joon-young hums thoughtfully. "Perhaps. I'll know more when I get there. But it's quite far out."

"If you're back by lunch, I'll come for tea. You can tell me about it."

"A cup of tea would do me good," Joon-young says. "Ah, I went by your house to tell you. You weren't home."

"I was out."

"You're still… out," Joon-young says, like the words are unfamiliar, when in fact it is Min being out at all that is the unfamiliar thing.

"Yes," Min says. 

There's a very long silence. He listens to Joon-young's breaths, and his own, and the creaks of Hyun moving around in the bed, and when Hyun looks at him Min puts a finger to his lips, gestures at the phone, puts his finger to his lips again. Hyun nods and goes to the bathroom, switching it on. He looks awful in the brief sliver of fluorescents before the door swings shut. It's not a quiet door. 

"Where are you?" Joon-young asks finally.

"Out," Min says, and then because Joon-young likes a little honesty from time to time, "It was an impulse. I'll think of a nice lie for you."

He chuckles. "I look forward to it."

Min hangs up and reads the rest of his email and texts. Nothing interesting, and he's aware of Hyun's observation from the bathroom door, hands in pockets, head tilted and studying him with a focus that is distinctly disconcerting. He finishes reading the last message, swallows anxiety and raises an eyebrow. "What?"

"Not exclusive?" Hyun asks. It's a fair question, he supposes. From his end of the conversation it could be assumed he was talking to a jealous lover of some sort.

Min deflects. Joon-young is not a topic he's willing to discuss with hyung, not while hyung looks soft and worn and much too intent on watching Min's responses. He doesn't know what he'll give away if he starts thinking about Joon-young in front of him. "You were away a long time. Some situations changed." He switches his phone off silent. "Are you done with the bathroom? I should go to work."

Hyun points a thumb back over his shoulder at the bed. "I'm still tired, so ... I'll see you later."

"Call me when you're free," Min says, "and you can have breakfast then. Or lunch. Or," as Hyun walks toward him and Min becomes abruptly conscious that he is still not wearing anything, "dinner. Or tea." He licks his lips nervously when Hyun comes to a stop just a bare step away. "Or a snack."

"I'd like one now," Hyun says. He curls a deliciously warm hand around the back of Min's neck and draws him down for a kiss, slow and tasting of toothpaste. "Ah, that's right. Criminal law attorneys attend conferences, don't they?"

"Not usually," Min says, voice wavering a little. What is this? An invitation?

"I'm speaking tomorrow at the Korean criminal policing conference at ten. If you have time we could have lunch after my talk."

It is! 

"I'll ask," Min says, raw inside with a hope so delicate and risky it feels like glass. "Wait a bit."

She answers on the second ring. "I don't care if you broke a leg--"

"No," Min cuts in. "I wanted to ask you. If I finish the Oh Tae-bong report to standard today, could I go to the criminal policing conference tomorrow?"

"You arrogant little upstart!"

She's a fast talker, but Min's faster. "What if I finish it by three? That gives you lots of time, right? It would just be for a few hours anyway. You know Lee Hyun's speaking, right? I'm a big fan."

Hyun looks away with a grin and Min bites his lip, waiting on her decision. 

"You know what? If you finish that pile of shit and Prosecutor Ha and myself _and_ Judge Su like it, then you can go. If even one of us says no you'll be rewriting until we're happy. Even when your fingers fall off!"

Judge Su is a sour old curmudgeon who doesn't approve of anything. But this is hyung's first time inviting him anywhere, and Min does have the skills. He's capable. "I'll do it."

"Prove it," she snaps, and hangs up.

Min looks at hyung. It's obvious he heard both sides of the conversation. "Then, see you tomorrow."

"Oh Tae-bong," Hyun says. "I read about that on the plane. A witness for an important case dying a suspicious death in custody."

"And?" Min asks. "Since you read about it."

Hyun tilts his head. "He was murdered with the same style and signature of the accused, but that man is already held elsewhere. Cell video, nonexistent. CCTV in the corridor shows the guard was asleep at his desk at the time of the murder." He puts his hands in his pockets. "Isn't that embarrassing for you?"

Min curls his mouth in amusement. Other people find it embarrassing, especially the speculation about how well they might or might not protect other witnesses in light of recent rumours of corruption in the prosecutorial division. But he and Joon-young are just enjoying the spectacle. "It's been an interesting time."

Hyun cocks his head. "You're not fazed. Why?"

"I know the case," Min says. "I think it will be fine to go ahead with the evidence we have. Oh Tae-bong was a good witness, but not necessary." Hyung is staring at him. "Ah. Speaking as an attorney, of course."

Hyun lifts his head and looks him in the eye, looking very awake now, sleepiness all but faded. "Will you see my talk tomorrow? I'm launching my book. It's about the genes of psychopaths. You might be interested."

Min smiles. Yes, hyung is much less subtle than Joon-young. It's refreshing. "Did I worry you?"

"I'd like to discuss it with you. It's always good to hear new perspectives."

That makes him laugh. Hyun has no idea of Min's … perspectives. None at all. "Then we'll do that. Go back to sleep. I'll leave quietly." 

"One more first," hyung says, and Min indulges himself in his kiss, long and slow and technically eight separate kisses in their own right, but it's not as though the technical details matter when Hyun is kissing him like this. Hyun could kiss him forever and Min wouldn't mind. "Ah. That was what I wanted. Go shower."

***

His compilation of the Oh Tae-bong case files is apparently the first time Judge Su has ever used the word _flawless_.

"You pulled through this time. But if you even think of bargaining with me like that like that again, you're fired," his supervisor says, flicking her fingers with a moue of disgust. "Well, I promised, so off you go. Here's your pass."

Min ducks his head. "Thank you."

She holds onto the edge. "I expect you back here at four on the dot." 

***

The gum-snapper is the first person to spot him when he takes a seat towards the back of the lecture hall fifteen minutes before the talk starts. 

"You're here too?" The gum-snapper sways back with an exaggerated gesture of astonishment that makes their flimsy chair buckle.

Min shrugs and watches him drag a new one from the row behind them. "Everyone is on holidays."

"Tell me about it," the gum-snapper says, and starts going on about their job as legal adjunct at a mental health facility for VVIPs. Non-disclosure agreements don't hold a single gram of water against the urge to gossip, and the gum-snapper greets others and invites them to join in.

Min listens, occasionally contributing inconsequential bits of information, and focuses on the stage Hyun is standing on. A grey jacket, plain white shirt, expensive dress shoes. His hair spiked, again, and the memory of ruining that coiff makes his fingers tingle. Min watches him confer with a few other people, mostly the emcee and the audio production team running around with headphones and walkie-talkies bouncing on their belts. They give Hyun a mike, test it privately, and Hyun looks at a sheaf of white papers that Min supposes to be notes.

He doesn't look up at the audience, and when the talk starts and he begins to speak he doesn't look at Min. He doesn't really look at anyone, looks a little past them and around the room. Someone's trained him in speaking to a crowd in a way that connects with them as a group and not as individuals, nearly the opposite of Min's own training. _See the person and find the lever_ , Joon-young used to say.

The talk itself is interesting. Not novel, after Joon-young's obsession with reading aloud from books that he considers to be about himself, but interesting.

Hyun finds him in the antechamber, standing about with a glass of wine in a loose knot of the gum-snapper's invitees and touches his elbow. "Lunch?"

"Excuse me," Min says, hoping no-one can see his face go warm at being sought out like this, and extricates himself from the doubtlessly fascinating tale of one of the prosecutors attempting to take their dog to work.

"They didn't seem like your friends," Hyun says in the corridor.

"They're not," Min says.

***

Lunch is a pleasant affair, broad-rimmed plates and artistically-arranged salads and a lovely wine list.

And of course Hyun across from him. Having his regard is such a pleasure. Dangerous with all the things Min is still considering whether to ever say, but wonderful too. Hyung is looking at him. How can that not have meaning? Min looks back without shame.

"So. Your opinion?"

Min considers. "Your diagrams are unnecessarily detailed and you're fond of biological determinism," he says after a few bites.

Hyung scoffs. "My diagrams?"

"Your diagrams," Min says.

He shakes his head. "You misunderstood. Current research suggests that psychopathy is something which can be primed in a person's genes and triggered in combination with environmental effects. The probability for such a person to commit murder is high. That's not determinism."

Min wonders what hyung would say if he reminded him about that day, that day frozen gorgeous in his mind. A splatter of blood, and the lilacs, and their mother gasping. It was lovely, the three of them together. It was. It is still lovely when he revisits the beginning and lovely when hyung wakes up after lying so quiet and still for so long. He pulls it in and out of his mind and it never really changes. All the scattered objects and their mother's scream. The way she said _I'll be right back_ and then never did come back.

The shade of sunlight his wine becomes in this light and this moment is beautiful, and the ephemeral nature of it fascinates him. A little shift and it would be a different colour altogether, no direct light and no spark. But if he moved it back after that and it blazed like before, would it be the same light, the same shade, the same picture-perfect beauty? Or different? Would it be lesser for the interruption, or more? Would it just be the same the way watching their mother and her killer die together is always the same?

But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what could have been. Hyung gave him to Joon-young, even if he seems to regret it at times, and that is what hyung made of Min.

"I have never been a good person," Min says.

Hyun leans his elbows on the table, fingers linked together. "You have no idea how many people tell me that. I'll ask you what I ask them. Do you want to kill people?"

"Yes," Min says.

Hyun nods, though his gaze is very narrow. "Do you feel like you're going to kill people?"

"Yes." He watches hyung's face change into something uncertain, off-balance. Min supposes he doesn't often get real psychopaths answering his questions. But Hyun is starting to wonder if Min is telling the truth, and that's enough vulnerability for today. "Mostly when my colleagues back up the printer," Min says, bland and truthful. "I feel especially murderous then." He lifts an eyebrow at the way hyung is searching his face, still poised and focused. "I'm joking."

Hyun smiles after a moment, the false smile that people use to cover up thoughts. "Your poker face is pretty good," he says, glancing at Min like he could reach in and take a scalpel to his brain if only he had the tools.

It feels like being wanted, truly wanted. Joon-young looks at him like that sometimes, and from Hyun it makes his gut warm the same way. Hyun is curious about him, how he thinks, what he thinks. It feels good. 

"Occupational skill," Min says. "Some clients make it necessary."

Hyun's face tightens when Min looks down to finish off his food and he wonders if he's gone too far. If this is all too far into something he can't control. Joon-young will find out eventually but Min doesn't have to tempt him into actually looking, does he? Like he is right now, sitting with him at a public event. Joon-young might come back early and see them together like this in the cafe attached to the convention center. Anyone could walk up and see them. Joon-young could see them.

He pushes the thought away and takes another bite of food, though he doesn't quite taste it.

"You've been different with me this time," Hyun says. "I was too tired to talk then, but I did say we would talk. So talk. What is it?"

Min hesitates. "The truth?"

"The truth," hyung says.

"I like you," Min says, "and I want to be closer to you. But I don't know if you feel the same."

It's true. All these years of thinking about hyung, wondering about hyung, tracking hyung, watching him, and he feels for him a feeling that is a mess of pieces of other feelings, love and hollowness, resentment and hope, that he only knows to identify through their popular analogues. 

If love is an open door, the way he feels for Hyun is a door thrown open so wide the windows are shattered. If hollowness is a cavern Min's emptiness is the sky turned upside down. If resentment is holding a person's deeds against them, Min in himself is a shadow pinned to Hyun's hands. If hope is exemplified by the saying that no news is good news, then Min's heart is a wall of unwritten letters.

He never expected, in any of that, to like Hyun as a person. But he does. Min likes his hyung, finds him interesting and appreciates his company because it is Hyun and not only because it is hyung, and the strangeness of finding out things about Hyun that he still didn't learn from all those years of watching and waiting aches. Min did his best to know everything about Hyun but it still wasn't enough, was it? Min is still… inadequate.

"Well, I don't know if you were really joking, but you remind me of someone," Hyun says. "Or, no, that's not true. You remind me of someone I knew. Someone they could have been."

"Min?" Min asks. His own name is strange in his mouth. "You said it in your sleep."

"Oh." Hyun chuckles. "No, not him. When I was a child I met a man named named Lee Joon-young."

Min scoffs without quite thinking. "Him?"

"You know him?" He can feel Hyun's interest sharpen. "It was a long time ago."

"That case has been compared to the Oh Tae-bong case." It's not a lie. He can't look up. His eyes hurt. Tears, perhaps? "Never mind that. Why?"

Joon-young.

Always, always, always Joon-young.

Why is it always Joon-young?

Min pulls away before Hyun can take his hand. It feels like ripping his own skin off to refuse hyung touching him, but -- not like this, not where Joon-young might see. 

"Why?" Min asks again.

"Ah. Well, anyway. He was intelligent, highly perceptive," he says. "Dedicated, to accomplish what he did. If he hadn't been a murderer, what else could he have been? Perhaps someone accomplished like that could have been someone like you."

Min's entire body hitches around a laugh that can't escape.

Hyun is trying to comfort him. Isn't he? Hyun is trying to comfort him. With a comparison to Joon-young. By saying that Min is somehow better than Joon-young because Min is a _failure_.

Hyung gave him away. Hyung _gave him away_ , to that man, and expects Min to be _better_ than the man who raised him and looked after him and gave him so generously of everything. How could Min possibly be better than that? He's never so much as thought of doing such a thing as that. If it had been him he would have abandoned that whining little albatross by the side of the road with a broken neck. Joon-young … Joon-young is different. Joon-young saves people, takes care of them, raises and looks after them. Joon-young cares. Min doesn't. Min just isn't a good person. 

Hyung told Joon-young he wasn't good. Hyun broke the promise and gave him away, and now he says that.

Yes, Joon-young could have been like Min. But Joon-young is the better person.

The laugh turns awful, he can feel it, the horrible sound it would make it if he let it out, and he can't quite choke it back.

"You don't look good. Did I offend you?" Hyun asks, and he actually sounds like Min's answer would matter. The gall of him.

Min shakes his head. "I'm fine," he manages, and sips the water poured him, conscious of possibly attracting attention. This is not a place where he wants to be obvious. He shakes his head again, blinking very hard, and claws together some sort of -- veneer. Some kind of practicable lie that will hold him until he can go somewhere his brother is not, like anywhere else, everywhere else, and be himself again. 

"Is this how you test people?" Min asks him, trying to pretend he is a normal person affected by being told he is like Joon-young, instead of all the things he is (Min), and all the things he isn't (someone hyung wants). "Compare them to suspected serial murderers?"

"I did mean it as a compliment," Hyun says.

Min shakes his head and pours himself another glass of water, holding his wrist to stop his hand from quivering. "It wasn't," Min says, swallowing another hitch in his breath. 

"I see that." Hyun rubs his mouth, offers, grudgingly: "Sorry."

 _Who killed our father?_ Min wants to ask him. _Was it Lee Joon-young, or was it you? If he gave you the opportunity -- did you take it? After all that time, after everything, did you take it?_

So many questions. But Min isn't good enough to ask them, is he? He would answer Joon-young, probably, since that is who he likes. But not Min. Still … not Min. Even when Min is Jung Sun-ho.

"Since that was your answer, I should go to work," he says, and excuses himself to the bathroom.

Hyun follows him without even attempting for a discreet interval but at least he's quiet until they're washing their hands.

"That's not what I meant," Hyun says. Min shrugs and tidies his hair and fixes his cuffs and washes his face. He shouldn't care what hyung means. He shouldn't care. He shouldn't. "I know how you took it, but I really meant something else."

Min turns to him, adjusting his tie. He shouldn't care. But he asks anyway, and it is helplessness, this need for hyung, and he hates it. "Then what?"

"I like you too," Hyun says, hands stuffed in his pockets. He seems embarrassed. "I also want to be closer to you. That's what I meant."

"Oh," Min manages, surprised. Forgiveness isn't something he has the capacity to grant. He's never understood forgiveness. He would still be angry at the child that stole his favourite pencil in kindergarten if he ever saw him again. He's still annoyed thinking about it. But a chance -- that, he understands. That he knows how to give. "Do you want to make it up to me?"

Hyun nods. "If I can."

"I have to be at work by four," Min says. "Your hotel is not too far, is it?"

"It's not," Hyun says, and smiles at him in the mirror.

The shape of Joon-young's name in hyung's mouth still hammers in his ears.

 _That's who he cares about_ , Min thinks to his own face. _Not you. It was never you. You're not worth remembering_.

Min manages to smile back at him. "Let's go."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not actually planning for this to be straight casefic, but I do intend for the general case to be sort of woven in and out of things because, horror of horrors, I actually kind of have a plot.

"I'll do that," Min says, and takes over unbuttoning Hyun's shirt. It puts them close together, breathing together, and Hyun is warm through the fabric. He can feel his breaths, the firmness of his muscles. "I'll do this for you."

Min pushes it off his shoulders, pulls his undershirt out of his trousers and slides his hands up along the skin beneath to take it off. Hyun lifts his arms without being told and settles them back at his sides as Min moves to his trousers. No belt today, and he makes quick work of the button and zipper, hooks his fingers in his underwear and pulls it all down to his feet.

Socks now, and Hyun lifts his feet, balancing his fingertips on Min's shoulder, and then he is naked to Min's eyes.

Min goes properly to his knees.

"Are you --"

"Didn't you say you'd make it up to me?" Min interrupts, raising an eyebrow up at him. 

From this perspective Hyun is all skin, chest and cock and chin, bathed in light on one side and shadowed on the other, the prominence of his wrist on the shadowed side echoed by the highlighted illiac crest on the other. Min would draw the memory in charcoal. It would be absolute pornography from the first to last stroke.

Hyun swallows. The look on his face, open and lusty, is wonderful. "You're prepared, right?"

Min reaches into his back pocket and produces a condom. "Of course I am. Also, I know a trick. Keep your hands down."

He places the condom in his mouth, balancing it on his lips and teeth, and applies it in a long, slow unrolling down his cock, deliberately relaxing his throat to bottom out as far as he can.

"Oh," Hyun breathes.

Min would laugh at the stupefied look on Hyun's face if his mouth weren't full.

Joon-young says Min is very good at this.

It's time to test that.

***

He asks Hyun to take care of him once the condom is dealt with and they're both stripped, no specifics, just to take care of him, and apparently for Hyun that means a long, leisurely fuck, the kind with Min on his back and Hyun pressing into him bit by bit, Min's knees up around his back and Hyun groaning into his mouth as they kiss. 

Min doesn't mind at all. Likes it, in fact. It's easier to lean into his touch when he knows for sure he doesn't ever have a chance of being hyung's number one, no matter how much the fact hurts.

It just means taking what he can, when he can, from Joon-young. Stealing time with hyung and making it his. Making himself someone not so easy to forget, this time. Someone Hyun will talk to even when they aren't face to face. Min's not sure if he can manage such a thing, it's all easier said than done, but he wants to try.

Long and slow doesn't mean without bloodshed, and he leisurely rakes his nails over his back and claws them into Hyun's arms and bites his lip, his jaw, his shoulders, everywhere he can reach, slow greedy bites, tasting the thickness of flesh and fat and skin, feeling the hardness of bone wrapped in all those layers. Hyung still doesn't feel real sometimes but when Min has his teeth in him, his cock in him, then it feels real.

Afterwards Hyun sinks to the bed beside him, their legs still entwined. "Feel better?"

Min makes a noise of assent and stretches leisurely, feeling the deep soreness in places where Hyun gripped him and held him down, the way his lower back aches. There's a lovely quiet inside his head. "I think you made it up to me very nicely."

He reaches to stroke down Min's arm. If he's anything like Joon-young he's mentally reciting the muscles from shoulder to finger as he travels them, though Hyun's knowledge is likely less specialised than Joon-young's and Min's by association.

The way he pauses warm on the tendentious back of his wrist and traces their spread over the back of his hand gives rise to one of Joon-young's anatomical diagrams, trailing words in recital along with the brush of Hyun's fingertips: extensor carpi ulnaris, extensor digiti minimi, extensor digitoriums, extensor policis longus, extensor policis brevis, abductor policis longus.

Hyun's finger runs up to Min's elbow and down the inside of his arm, trailing to his palm the outline of the flexor carpi ulnaris and its corresponding tendon.

Does hyung, like Joon-young, wish to open his skin and look at his body?

"I expected you to hold it against me a little longer," Hyun says.

It takes Min a moment to remember that actually there was a conversation before Hyun decided to make Min recall Joon-young's first-year anatomical studies, and he meets his eyes. "It's not necessary."

He smiles. "That's true. You are attractive. Then, what about me?"

"I was thinking about turning you around, pushing down your underwear and fucking you up against that lectern in front of everyone," Min says. Like this, fresh from sex and languid with kisses, it's easier to be bold. "It was very distracting."

Hyun reddens, face sharpening into a smile that he tries and fails to hide from Min's eyes. "Let me give you my email. International minutes are expensive."

"Bring my phone too." Min rests an arm over his eyes and settles a little more into the blankets. Neither of them bothered to untuck and get into the actual bed and now the bottom corners are entirely ruined, the blankets rucked up into messy piles and the sheets stripped off the mattress. It was that sort of fucking, wasn't it? The evidence of Hyun wanting him, inside and out and around them, is pleasing. "Those flowers are nice."

"They're hyacinths. Here," Hyun says, holding it out, and Min lazily accepts with a swipe of his thumb over the correct pattern. "My email is david.l.lee."

He hesitates a moment over what to enter him as, then simply titles him as _David Lee Hyun_ and sends an email.

Purple hyacinths. It feels like their mother is watching him. _Hello, aren't I disgusting_ , he wants to say. _Look at what your sons are doing. Do you like it?_

"That's my address," he says.

The only body text is _you're hot, kiss me_ , so it doesn't take hyung long to look over at Min, take both their phones, set them aside and do exactly that.

"What time is it?" Min asks once Hyun lifts his head to breathe. His mouth is tingling pleasantly and he's settled under hyung in a state of mind that feels as smooth and buttery as Joon-young stroking him for an hour. He's a mess. They're both messes, and Min is hard and warm all over, naked and feeling as though he isn't at all. Hyun's eyes on him, hot and aroused, obviate any need for clothes, any consciousness of vulnerability. He's just with hyung. With him, and hyung wants him. Hyung gave him his email. Hyung wants him.

"Ten past three," hyung says, mouth running over his jaw, breath hot against his ear, his fingers curling around Min's cock. "Enough time?"

Barely. But to be with hyung? It's not a question. "Yes," Min says.

***

He arrives at three minutes to four.

She glares.

"I'm not late," Min says.

"Hmph. Since you did so well with the Oh Tae-bong case, there's a suspected murder case related to it that's come across my desk again today. The statutes are nearly at expiry so I don't expect anything to come of it. But there are parts that will be useful and teach you interesting things. Take a look."

***

Joon-young is making dinner in his studio. It's fortunate that Hyun went to eat with his ahjumma.

Fortunate is one word. Incredibly, skin-of-his-teeth lucky is another, and for his pulse thumps with the shock of what could have happened if he brought Hyun home with him.

"When did you get back?" Min asks, taking off his jacket and tie.

Joon-young tastes the soup. "They kept us overnight for permission to autopsy. Where were you?"

Min doesn't let himself pause. "I was at work."

"I'm waiting," Joon-young says, his back still to Min, "for that nice lie you promised me."

"There was a visiting attorney at the office," Min says. "I went to his hotel with him."

Joon-young picks up a knife and begins to chop a carrot. "Have you seen your hyung?"

"Yes," Min says, taking a seat at the kitchen counter. "I saw his talk today. He's grown up well."

"You looked close," Joon-young murmurs, "in the cafe." 

His mouth is dry, his lips parched, his back aching with the impression of Hyun's hands. Somehow there's strength in that memory. There ought not to be, not in front of Joon-young, but there is. His hyung wanted him. Even if just for a couple of hours, his hyung wanted him. "I told him I was a criminal attorney."

"You made yourself interesting," Joon-young says.

Min is very careful and sure not to falter. "He's like you. He doesn't bother with people he doesn't find interesting."

"I don't think the brothers should reconcile." He tips the carrots into a pan. "It will be troublesome for your hyung."

"To him," Min says quietly, "I am Jung Sun-ho."

Joon-young smiles over his shoulder. "You always were a dilligent child."

That night Joon-young tastes his bruises and laps at his tears and every place Hyun touched that Min wanted to keep for himself is taken from him.

***

Hyun calls him in the morning while Min is getting ready for work. Joon-young's a fetal curl in the bed behind him and Min's careful to be downstairs in the kitchen and clear of the stairwell before he answers. Sometimes sound floats up.

"What is it?" Min asks, pouring himself coffee and opening a bowl of cold leftovers.

"I've been asked to consult on the Oh Tae-bong case," Hyun says. "I read your report. Very nice."

Min stifles giddiness, the urge to ask him if he's proud, if he likes Min's work, if he really thinks Min did a good job. "I worked hard. But that doesn't mean you're going to do it."

"Well, it'll be strange to work together. But I think it will be fine."

"I also think so. At the moment I am working on the Ha Ki-bang case. I think it will help with the Oh Tae-bong case, but it's not guaranteed."

"Ah, that is the shop-owner Oh Tae-bong is said to have witnessed? The first murder?"

"Yes. Some of the details are not consistent. Whether they're simply flaws in witness recollection or there is something else going on, I don't know. It's a hunch."

There's a long pause, and Hyun sounds a little different when he speaks again. "Don't discount the value of such things. It may be worth looking at." Min listens to him breathe. "Well, I'll want to interview the murderer, but his papers says it won't be possible without an attorney."

"I don't qualify," Min says reluctantly. The senior attorneys are handling Park Ji-woo, for good reason, and while he might be allowed to investigate the Ha Ki-bang case on its own, speaking to the accused himself, Park Ji-woo, is out of the question.

Unless he can figure out a way to tag along as a junior in need of experience, and since he did compile that report and it is currently his case, he could possibly make it happen. Possibly.

"I don't qualify," he continues, "but I can likely be a side-along to the lead attorney. If you're doing it."

"Why not? I like the way you look in your suits. Very sharp. Sexy."

Min's face heats and a bite of breakfast nearly goes down the wrong way, making him splutter.

Hyun laughs.

"I'm eating," Min complains.

Hyun is still laughing. "I'll see you soon."

***

"So there's a rumour going around," Attorney Lee Chun-seok says, perched on a corner of his cubicle desk and hunched down to avoid the gimlet stare of Attorney Kang, coffee cup crinkled in his hand, "that you're kind of an asshole."

Min looks up at him. "Am I?" he asks with his brightest smile, well aware he's providing proof that yes, he is an asshole.

Chun-seok, ranked #1 in the bar exam, drains his coffee. "If they had any fucking idea how much it wouldn't just be a rumour. But you're also super good and I've got this case I just can't fucking put together. I have not fucking slept, man. Help me out here."

Min's been waiting for this for a while. Chun-seok always asked him for help in the study group and he's been so visibly frazzled by that case that several of the lead attorneys have told him to stop pacing in the hall and just give up. It was a matter of waiting, that's all.

"What makes you think I have more free time than you?" Min says, turning back to his computer.

He sighs. "You're such an asshole. Jesus. Okay. What do you want for it?"

Min briefly pretends to think. Previously he would have just kept the favour in reserve -- Chun-seok's connections are powerful -- but hyung asked. "I've got the Ha Ki-bang case because of the Oh Tae-bong case. But I haven't spoken to Park Ji-woo myself."

"You want to sit in the interview of somebody that fucking off-limits. Of fucking course you do. Fine." He takes the lid off his cup and licks around the rim. "Okay, you look at it, I'll get you your walkies."

"Make it happen. Then I'll look."

"Jesus," he says again.

Min smiles just as brightly as before. "Please teach me, sunbae."

That afternoon a request on behalf of the task force team investigating the Oh Tae-bong case appears in his email. Their criminal consultant, one Lee Hyun, requests the assistance of the lead attorney in charge of the Ha Ki-bang case in arranging and attending interviews with Park Ji-woo. 

Attached is an approved request from Prosecutor Ha for Jung Sun-ho to be allowed observation as a junior attorney.

It's followed by a text from Chun-seok. _NOW COME FUCKING HELP ME ASSHOLE._

Min stops to get him some of the good coffee first. Dilligence deserves reward.

***

"I don't talk about work in bed," Hyun says that night. His voice is deep and welcome in Min's ear, and Min closes his eyes, enjoying the weight of his hand splayed on his stomach, his thigh warm against Min's. "I'd rather talk about you."

"Not much to say," Min murmurs. 

Not talking about work doesn't mean he can't think about it. 

The preliminary meeting between members of the defense, prosecution, task force and Lee Hyun was set for a few days from now. Letting Hyun interview Park Ji-woo is more of a last-ditch attempt in case there is something new or different than a serious effort to bring forward new evidence, and everyone clever knows it. There is just not a high enough probability; Park's been interviewed tens of times by a variety of people interested in speaking to a serial killer with a signature and a price and over time his story and defenses have been remarkably consistent.

The puzzle is Oh Tae-bong in comparison with the murder of Ha Ki-bang. Both in the same style, the same way, but with Park in prison it cannot have been Park. And yet the roughness, the newness, is the same. The method is unrefined in the murder of Ha Ki-bang and Oh Tae-bong's autopsy showed a similar lack of refinement. A copycat, perhaps, but one that knows the truth about how Park Ji-woo is supposed to have killed his victims, and one that knows the prison CCTV. Tribute? Defiance?

Hyun sighs. "Stop thinking about work," he says, though he sounds amused.

Caught. But Min wasn't trying. "Well, I'm an attorney. I'm quite good. I like art. I'm quite good at that too. I like sex. I'm also quite good at that."

"That's all," Hyun says, sounding utterly unconvinced. "What about something you like? Or don't like." He kisses the back of Min's neck. "Do you like this?"

"Yes." Min thinks about it. What can he possibly say about himself, his life, his choices, his preferences and lack of, that doesn't involve or indict Lee Joon-young? _There isn't really a me_ sounds ridiculous and dramatic, even Min knows that, even if it's true. He doesn't ... exist, not really. Not Min, not Jung Sun-ho. Neither of them do. Min on the inside is a collection of parts and memories. Nothing about him is whole. Nothing in him has been whole since that night. Perhaps nothing ever was.

Well, the dilemma itself is safe enough to talk about, if he's careful. Making Joon-young sound like a jealous lover isn't difficult. "The one that's not exclusive. I've been with him for a long time. But I don't want to talk about him when I am with you. So there's not much to say."

"Ah." Hyun's hand pets over his thigh and he doesn't say anything else.

Min feels like he's disappointed hyung, and it aches. He doesn't want to be a disappointment. He doesn't want to be lacking, even though he is. But if he can make up for it, then -- "I ... I like soju," he starts, sighing, trying to brace himself with full lungs. "I don't like red wine. I don't like much music. I like clean sheets and the way you smell, and I like finishing cases. Geometry. Puzzles. When I was a child my uncle kept me quiet with 5000-piece jigsaws. I would make them on the floor next to his desk and he walked on top of the bookcases when they got too big to avoid."

Joon-young never wanted him, Min knows that. But Joon-young never broke anything Min cared about, and he didn't step on Min's puzzles, and when Min was ill Joon-young cared for him with a home medicine book from the thrift store open on the nightstand. All these things Joon-young has done for him, and yet Min doesn't like him as much he likes hyung. He doesn't want him, doesn't lean into his touch the way he does hyung.

If Hyun finds Joon-young, if Joon-young finds him, will they like each other better than Min? Will Min be alone?

That can't be allowed to happen. It can't.

"I don't know what to tell you."

"That's enough for now," Hyun says. Min can feel his smile against his shoulder. "That's a lot. When I was young, my brother and I would draw on the floor next to our father's desk. Our father was working most of the time -- his schedule was nearly as bad as yours -- and I took care of most things. But when he came home early and Min and I could draw together while he watched over us ... it felt all right. That made it all right."

Min bites his tongue as long as he can, but he needs to know. He craves knowing. He has to know. "Do you miss him? Lee Min?"

The sigh behind him is low and soft, and Min can feel the flutter of his lashes when he closes his eyes. "Always," Hyun says. "I always miss him. I always wonder if he's doing well. Where he is. If he's safe. What happened to him. How he grew up. If he's still alive. There are so many things I want to ask him."

He swallows tears. "I looked into the Lee Joon-young case after you mentioned him," Min says. "You ... it was a long time ago. You still think like that?"

"Hope is an alive dream," Hyun says. "I do."

It can't be alive. No matter how he looks at it, it can't. Even if they weren't this, even if it wouldn't disgust Hyun to know who Min is, Joon-young will never, ever allow Min to be Hyun's brother Lee Min, not under any circumstances. He's Joon-young's. He knows that. Everything he owes, he owes to Joon-young. And Joon-young is Min's, too. Min won't abandon him. They won't abandon each other. They promised.

"I have a sense for these things," Min manages, not looking up at him. He doesn't want to hurt hyung like this. He wants to tear him to pieces and flay him and sink his fingernails into his eyes and squeeze until they pop like half-cooked eggs. He doesn't want this pathetic, vulnerable little hurt to be his fault. He wants to kill him, not ... this stupidity. "My sense says this is not possible. What you want is not possible, so --"

"You said you didn't remember anything else," Hyun interrupts.

Min swallows again, hurt and rage fluttering hard enough that his own breath is all he can hear. "I don't, but I know this: if he died since I knew him, it would be a mercy."

Hyun flinches against him and recoils.

Min breathes. The taste of that truth stings in his mouth. Yes. Perhaps it would always have been a mercy. Perhaps things would have better. For everyone. But Min waited. Min was too busy waiting. 

"Tell me one thing. You thought of him. You say you wondered about him. You said you didn't abandon him. But did you look for him? Did you ever look?"

"It's true," Hyun says after a long silence so tense Min's feet are quivering with the readiness to run or fight or scream. "I didn't look."

Too busy waiting for _nothing_.

"Ah, well, at least you miss him," Min says with all the bitter mockery he feels and it's still paltry and insubstantial in his mouth compared to the shock of Hyun admitting it. 

Min shakes Hyun off to shower and collect himself. He's made too many mistakes already.

***

When Min gets out of the shower Hyun's up and dressed, standing with his hands in his pockets against the window overlooking Seoul.

"I looked into what you told me last time," Hyun says without turning around. "About Busan. I called in a favour. Seventeen years ago a Lee Min registered at a certain school in Busan and disappeared after two years of attendance. They didn't think it was the same Lee Min, the citizen registry was different, but I saw the photo. I think it was Min. My brother Min."

He doesn't know if to go to him or just go, and he stays frozen by the bathroom door, steam washing around his back, uncertain and unsteady. "About what I said."

"When I was a child I had an excuse," Hyun says, and Min blinks. "But as an adult I had friends, resources, connections. I could have at least tried, and I didn't. And whatever happened to Min after that is ... my fault. No. From the beginning, it's -- it's my fault. But, there is one thing." 

Hyun turns around and there's nothing on his face that looks like a lover. "This was fifteen years ago. But you remember him as if he was your friend."

"He wasn't. We were similiar in a different way," Min says, deciding truth is the best tactic. "My uncle did his best with me, but ... when I saw Lee Min, I saw everything I felt on his face. And I thought, 'is that what I look like? Am I that transparent too?'" Min's sigh isn't entirely faked. "We weren't friends. We couldn't be."

Min has never quite seen the point of liking or disliking himself. He looks in the mirror and he sees a face with eyes and a mouth and ears. A collection of attributes rather than a face. As a child the movement in the mirror with his own movement was profoundly disconcerting -- his own face seemed more of a painting or photograph, and to have it move with him was very odd. It's still odd to him. Describing himself as someone else is easier than he expected. He has just to talk about the Min in the mirror and it comes easily. 

"He was that unhappy, then," Hyun says quietly. "You were also unhappy?" His eyes sharpen so much that it's like looking at Joon-young.

"I was lonely," Min says. _I am_ , he doesn't say. Min's loneliness these days is generally of his own making. There is a pair of jaws in whatever excuse for a soul he has and they are insatiable. Hyun sates them, but only while Min can see him and touch him.

Hyun's mouth quirks. "Ah, that."

"Why?" Min asks. "My uncle was the only one of my family that wanted me, but you --" He gestures to him, up and down, trying to find what it is he wants to say. 

How to express the injustice of Hyun being miserable without him when he was taken for Hyun's convenience to begin with? Shouldn't he at least have made something lovely out of his life without the burden of Min? Wasn't Min at least worth that? Was he worth anything?

"You seem better adjusted," Min says finally. He's heard people say that. Adjusted. Like clocks. Min supposes if he is a clock he is not a very good one. Maladjusted.

Hyun shrugs. "Normal children rebel against their parents."

Min feels his breath punch out in a desperate attempt not to laugh. It's not funny. It's not funny at all. But somehow -- yes, it is. Rebelling against their father, what their father thought of Hyun and did to him, in fear that Hyun was Min -- yes, it is funny.

Normal children.

But Min has never been a normal child.

Is this why he was given away to Joon-young, then? So Hyun can be normal? 

"I wouldn't know," Min says instead. "Do you want me to go?"

Hyun shakes his head. "It's already eleven. You should sleep."

***

"Min."

Min stirs, searching the dim room, and there's a whimper into his neck, a body weighty and warm without the fibrous feel of old starvation. Hyun. Hyung.

"Shh," he murmurs, shifting. Hyun's barely more than a curve of jaw and blanketed body to his eyes, and Min blinks to help them adjust. "You're dreaming."

"No. Min."

"Shh. I'm here. I'm here." Min kisses his cheek, smooths his hair. He's not sure what to do. He doesn't know how to wake someone kindly. "I'm here," and Min bends, finding his mouth, and kisses him.

Hyun shudders and stirs, hands coming up to rest on Min's back, and pulls back. "What time is it?" His voice is muzzy in the dark and his lashes brush wet against Min's cheek.

"About four. You were dreaming," Min tells him.

Hyun yawns and presses closer. "I remembered. Every time we are together I remember a little more." He yawns again. "At this rate I'll fill in everything and then I'll know what he said to me."

"Who?"

"Lee Joon-young," Hyun says, snuffling against Min's neck. "He said something."

Min stares into the dark. "He always does."

Hyun nods earnestly. "Very typical of psychopaths. Limited familiarity with social context leads to the creation of a false persona. The false persona is nearly always charming and talkative." Hyun mumbles for a moment and yawns again. "You should read my syllabus."

"Go back to sleep," Min tells him, petting Hyun's back. His throat is too full. "Go to sleep."

"No-one reads the syllabus," Hyun murmurs, sounding sad, and sighs hotly against Min's skin, then mumbles and settles into a loose, warm sprawl.

He's aware it is too much like luck to hope Hyun doesn't remember this in the morning. He hopes all the same.

Because perhaps ... could hyung not know how he gave Min away?

Could it be that he really doesn't remember what the hyacinths mean?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Hyun, he's already lamenting like a proper professor.


	8. Chapter 8

"Why did you want to be part of this?" Attorney Park asks him. Min's driving while he organises the thick folder of current case notes for Park Ji-woo. Three banker's boxes with past information are in the backseat. Attorney Park is the sort of attorney that prefers to digitise as little as he can get away with, and his reputation is good enough that he generally succeeds. "I heard it was Prosecutor Ha's request."

He thinks it over. Attorney Park looks dull even up close, round and sagging like a salaryman, but Min's seen him in court and even at a distance he was inspiring -- terror, ambition, the sneaking, sliding thought of _could I be like that too?_

"Attorney Jang assigned me the Ha Ki-bang case, to learn from it."

Attorney Park nods. "She likes you. You know that, right? Ha Ki-bang's just about settled as a guilty plea on Park Ji-woo's behalf, but it's still part of an active case. You shouldn't be touching it."

"I know. That's why I want to do well. I noticed while I was reading the witness depositions that the details of Ha Ki-bang's death match the circumstances of Oh Tae-bong's. Not the later murders Park Ji-woo is suspected of, but the one which is supposed to be his first."

"You too?" Attorney Park doesn't look up. "I haven't entered the plea officially yet, but waiting on further evidence can in the end hinder our case if we are seen as delaying until the statutes expire. Perhaps you know this?" Min nods. "That's already happening in the media. This is not a good time to ask for extensions from Judge Su."

Min waits at a red light and watches him, side-long, as he pages through another witness deposition.

Park Ji-woo is, from evidence, one of that rare breed of contract killer that is genuinely motivated by money. He lived a comfortable, lavish life before his arrest. He had savings, a budget, a long-term plan. By all accounts he treated murder as a form of shift work, and his friends have testified that he talked about it as if it were, with the same complaints about clients and slow processes as any other worker, but they had no idea that the work he referred to so casually was the business of murder.

He likes Park Ji-woo. He's meeting him for the first time today, but Min has seen videos of interviews. Park Ji-woo is so honest about who he is. About not caring. About not understanding why he should care. He feels less alone, listening to Park Ji-woo casually explain details of his murders the way cooks on television explain substitutions in their recipes. When he watches him, when he hears him, it feels like there might not be only one person in the world who understands him.

"Do you think Lee Hyun has a chance?" Min asks.

"I'm giving him one," Attorney Park says. "We'll see what he does with it."

***

Lee Hyun is already in the lobby when they get there. Team Leader Choi Jung-ho in charge of the evidentiary task force and Head Officer Sae Ja-hee in charge of Park Ji-woo's access and requirements are also there. Min doesn't smile at hyung, is careful not to show they know each other or how well, only nods to him when introductions are made.

Min sets down the banker's boxes in the conference room. There's already water set out and pens and papers, as well as an assortment of chargers at the powerpoint in the center. "What do you need?"

"I'll set up," Attorney Park says to Min, following him into the lobby. "Wait out here. Jung-ho!" he calls out, and he shakes hands with the police officer and they disappear into the room, doors shutting behind them.

Such meetings make up the process of justice.

Min turns around. Ja-hee waggles her phone at him, and Min checks his, one eye on Hyun, watching them with folded arms, his head tilted. _hes cute. is he actually good? or a wanker._

Ja-hee is another of Joon-young's kids and the one Joon-young likes the least. Ten years ago there was an argument where Min watched her throw a vase against the wall, tell Joon-young that as far as she's concerned she doesn't give a fuck about him personally, he's just the one who ended up doing the necessary for her without asking like a nosy, bossy busybody, and take her things out of the house in the rain in plastic bags.

Joon-young never mentioned her after that. Sometimes she calls Min when she's very drunk and calls him dongsaeng and asks how he's been, and until she falls asleep snoring into the phone he has an older sibling again. So he's never deleted her number.

But he has hyung now, in a limited fashion. He doesn't need even that whisper of someone liking him for him anymore, does he?

Still. It … helped. Even that little bit helped.

_A good wanker_ , Min replies.

_:D_ , is her response. _thanks for answering tho. u look great!_.

Min looks up and smiles at her.

"I think it will be okay," she says, interrupting the silence as though Min's response was a cue. "Ji-woo's in the mood for new people lately. If you're good enough to get Attorney Park down here, you're good enough to earn a little space. I think it will be fine."

"This is Head Officer Sae," Min says, playing his part. "She's the guard in charge of Park Ji-woo's affairs. Head Officer Sae, this is Lee Hyun, a visiting criminologist. He recently wrote a book on the genetic component of psychopathy."

"But you wouldn't be entering any evidence yourself," she says. "You're not licensed for court evidence, right?"

Hyun nods. "I'm here as a favour to the police investigation."

"Good luck," she says, and grins. "Who knows? I might even read your book."

***

Min doesn't mind being designated notetaker. It's the role of a junior attorney in a situation like this, and this way he's an observer rather than wasting time figuring out how to participate. There's enough ego in the room as it is. Attorney Park has been working the case for years and doesn't seem to much appreciate being called in to present it again to a consultant, despite what he said about chances in the car.

The future memory of this conversation is dependent on what Min does and does not write down. If it's pivotal, then Min's decisions are also pivotal. He likes that.

"This is a waste of my time. But it has been requested by Planning Officer Lee and Prosecutor Ha," gesturing to Min, "and so we are all here. You two are allowed to sit the interview along with Head Officer Sae. We'll be watching the video. There are questions we will not approve under any circumstances in order to protect the witnesses from unintentional provision of information by interviewers. This is the list."

That goes down precisely as well with Hyun as Min expected. He wishes Joon-young were here to be entertained too.

There's a video feed of Park Ji-woo waiting in the interview room. His face is wiry and smiling, and Min is distracted by the thought, the suspicion, that someone loves him. The more he looks at his calm, the face like a television grandfather, the more certain he is. Someone loves Park Ji-woo and Ji-woo knows it.

Hyun is watching him. Min looks at his notes. Admissible evidence, credentials, plausibility. Park maintains this is a waste of time. Officer Sae is interested in seeing what happens. Team Leader Choi is tired of working this case; actual words are 'not interested in letting him off on statute technicalities'.

"Does he have a history of gambling? Online poker? Does he buy lottery tickets?"

Park sighs. "Yes. Here and here are the financial summaries. Sun-ho-"

"Yes." Min's already pulling them from the stacks, and he puts the documents in front of hyung. "Youthful Days is a ticketing company for lotteries."

He pages through. "A ticket a week. Every week back through - how far back are these? 2007." Hyun puts a finger to his mouth, thoughtful. Min finds it extremely sexy. "For who? This is a conservative, confident man. Sure of himself, his jobs, his customers. So why?"

"We asked about them," Team Leader Choi says. "He said he bought them and threw them away."

"You believed him?"

Team Leader Choi sighs. "Of course not. We looked for them, we found them. No codes, no marks or symbols. The most recent before arrest was still in the bin where he said he threw them out. Nothing. We checked. They were just tickets."

"That boy probably works there," Min says, contemplating a crime scene photo. "Wherever he buys the tickets. His gamble shouldn't be for thrill. I think his vice is sentiment. Doesn't it seem like that?"

Hyun looks at Min, then, and it's as though he can see through every fragile layer of facade and into Min's fragments-of-self labelled with hyacinths and splashed blood and new-smelling backseats.

"I think," he says, "Attorney Jung should lead the interview."

***

Hyun wins the argument. Barely.

Given that Park Ji-woo is such a dangerous person there are regulations on what can be brought into the interview room. No phones, no electronic equipment. The only pencils allowed are made of paper. No clipboard, only a folder with fewer than fifty sheets of paper. A notepad with paper of a certain thinness and softness. No tie and no belt. The only equipment allowed is the equipment the prison has, locked in its cages; there is no opportunity to make personal recordings.

Ja-hee introduces them. "Sorry it took so long, the guys were having a dust-up. This is Lee Hyun, criminologist, and this is Jung Sun-ho, junior attorney. Aren't they cute?"

"Adorable," Park Ji-woo says, raising an eyebrow, and he looks at them both with friendly curiosity. "Brothers, right?"

Min shakes his head and takes a seat. "No." It tears at him that it's true. Brothers maybe, but while hyung is always his hyung, Min isn't his dongsaeng. Min is just … missing. Even right next to Hyun, he's missing. "I do apologise for the wait."

"Ah, it's a different wall to stare at. I'd shake your hand, but I'm a bit tied up." Park Ji-woo shakes his handcuffs. "What do you want to know?"

"I'm working on the Ha Ki-bang case. The shopkeeper you are accused of murdering on the 7th of April in 2003."

"Ah," Park Ji-woo says. "That one. My first, so it's a bit rough." He laughs. "I didn't get the techniques hammered out until later. But it's a good start, eh?"

"It isn't," Min says flatly. "You made several mistakes. You nearly died yourself. But it wasn't an impulse. It doesn't seem like an impulse."

He's conscious of the others watching him -- Attorney Park, Team Leader Choi, Ja-hee. Hyung beside him.

Park Ji-woo shrugs. "Everyone has their start somewhere."

"They do," Min agrees. "I want to start here." He puts a photo on the table, turns it right-way-up for him. "This is an image captured from surveillance of the scene around 12:34pm. Can you identify anyone in the photograph?"

"Well, that's me," Park Ji-woo says, pointing to a man in a cap in the center left. "That's the guy," thumb shifting to indicate a man behind the counter, arms blurred over his head, falling backwards. "What did you say his name was?"

"He was identified at autopsy as Ha Ki-bang," Min supplies, watching Park Ji-woo smile and look over the photo. Min can see him thinking over his mistakes, pausing as he looks at them -- the counter, the difference in reach, the cap, the choice of weapon. So many mistakes centered around one other, fundamental mistake. Distance.

"Ha, will you hear that? You are definitely a lawyer."

"I am," Min confirms. "But I'm a very new lawyer. So I want to be exact. I don't want to disappoint my boss." He tilts his head to the recording equipment. "He's watching. It would be awkward if I screwed up."

"Ah, bosses," and Park Ji-woo launches into a story about a customer he doesn't identify who asked him to do something his tone of voice indicates is unpleasant while indicating nothing about the task itself, and finishes with uproarious laughter.

Min rests his chin on his hands, studying the photo, and lets him talk.

"That was very entertaining," Min says without bothering to indicate any sort of entertainment. "Did you make a mistake in that incident too?"

"Of course," Park Ji-woo says. "I am only human. Mistakes happen to everyone, don't they?"

Min nods. "So why this mistake?"

"Which one?" Park Ji-woo bends to look at the picture again, flickering up to look at Min, trying to gauge him. But Min can hide himself from Joon-young. There is nothing in him for Ji-woo. "Hmm, you want me to guess? All right. How about … the time? Middle of the day was risky."

"No, you had a reason for that," Min says. "I mean the mistake you made when you took out your weapon so early. It doesn't seem reasonable to me that you would select a time of day when the shop was empty, choose your weapons carefully, dispose of your evidence with care, but take out your weapon before you were within reach of the counter. That seems unplanned. Risky. You're more careful than that. What happened?"

Park Ji-woo studies him. "It was a long time ago."

"I've heard," Min says, "that no-one forgets their first."

Except for hyung. But Ji-woo is not hyung. Ji-woo is too stupid to be anything like hyung.

Min closes his folder. "Park Ji-woo. Whose first was it? If you don't mind telling me," he asks, scrupulously polite. Jung Sun-ho, junior attorney, has _manners_.

Park Ji-woo looks over at Ja-hee sitting by the wall. "He is cute. Where'd you find him?"

She smiles. "I didn't."

"I identified myself," Park Ji-woo says. He thinks this is funny. Good. "I've identified myself, I've confessed, I've described it enough I hear it's a television standard now. Bit of a reach, don't you think?"

"You're not," Min says, "holding the right weapon."

The smile twists on his face, stays stuck on one side like the corner of his mouth is pinned to his gums. "What?"

"I asked you." He looks at the picture and up at Park Ji-woo. "Why you were standing so far back with the weapon visible. I think you were making room for someone already behind the counter. You didn't know where they would be and you didn't want to risk hurting them. So you gave warning, and drew the weapon in advance, and it was enough warning."

"This is bullshit," Park Ji-woo says. His smile straightens, and he scoffs. "Where's this ridiculous theory coming from?"

Min reaches to touch the cigarette carton sitting on the counter in the photo, blurry and unmistakeable. "You don't smoke," he says. "Smoking is not your vice."

"I asked for them so there was a way to light a fire in case I needed smoke cover," Park Ji-woo says, rolling his eyes. "I've explained this already."

"That," Min says delicately, "is not true. They were already on the counter at 12:30pm, Mr. Park." He puts the image in front of him. The cigarettes, Park Ji-woo, and a delivery person in loose hi-vis jacket and messy hair, behind the counter with a plastic box full of parcels. "The police and prosecution investigated him. Just a simple quick delivery service. He was spotted on street CCTV at 12:32pm. But you made another mistake."

Min lays the third photo on the table. It's after the murder but before a death to seal it, Ha Ki-bang still clinging to the counter with his arms stretched over the top and clinging to the far edge, his head thrown back and his tongue bulging out of his mouth, eyes wide and fishlike.

"12:33pm. He's not dead yet, Mr. Park. You're a diligent sort. Your hangeul is beautiful. Why would a diligent person let go of a weapon in the body of someone still alive? Don't you think that's an unnecessary risk?"

"He took a while to die," Park Ji-woo says. "Had to grab a different weapon."

Min nods, deliberately slow. "Of course. But why did it take a while? Why are you so far away from the counter? Were your backup weapons not in reach? That doesn't seem like you. Weren't you a professional?"

Park Ji-woo looks over at Ja-hee. "Where did you find this one? Seriously. He's really cute."

"Cuter than him?" Min taps the picture of the delivery boy.

Park Ji-woo smiles. "Nah. You're uglier."

Min smiles back. "It's true. You do remember your first." He tilts his head, slides forward the pictures of the delivery boy. Slender, messy hair, head down. Shoulders relaxed. "Don't you?"

"What are you getting at?"

Min meets his eyes. "Someone cares very much about you," he says. "There is someone who is willing to do all sorts of distasteful things for you. But..." Min frowns at the pictures. "Some people just aren't suitable. Don't you think?"

Park Ji-woo looks very cold now, though his mouth still smiles. Min knows that smile, and he answers it with one of his own, holds it in the stretching silence.

A lack always feels so heavy.

Park Ji-woo breathes in. Min can see his shoulders square, his nose flare and calm again. There's a gleam of sweat on the side of his neck.

"So?"

"Your first never did learn. Isn't it embarrassing?" He pretends to contemplate, pretends sympathy. "I would be embarrassed."

"Whatever that boy has done has nothing to do with me. Go ask him what he's been up to. I wouldn't know. I've been in here." He rattles the handcuffs.

"Should I?" Min takes out a picture of the Oh Tae-bong crime scene and lays it down next to a picture of the Ha Ki-bang scene.

They're not exactly the same. But the weapons, the cause of death and the way they died - those are identical. To Min, to Lee Joon-young, that much is obvious. It should also be obvious to Park Ji-woo if he was ever at all competent.

Min shows him Lee Joon-young's favourite smile. "Park Ji-woo."

He could say _look how much he loves you _.__ But he doesn't have to.

Park Ji-woo's mouth crumples.

"Your turn," Min says. He's bored of Park Ji-woo and these are all the openings even someone less competent than hyung should need.

Hyun takes over and Min basks in the murmur of _well done_ , basks in watching his brother make beautiful agony out of the fragile nest Min has made of Park Ji-woo's silly little pretense at indifference.

Joon-young would only expect it of him, but hyung is proud. Hyung says he did well.

It almost makes up for knowing that Park Ji-woo also isn't the kind of person who can understand him. It's still Joon-young. Still only Joon-young.

Is it that Joon-young is special? Or is it that Min is so very bad a person?

***

"Shit, kid," Ja-hee says once they're outside and she's shut the door on Park Ji-woo's weeping. "That was a hell of a tag team."

Min pushes his hair out of his eyes, torn between the thrill that it worked and the knowledge that Hyun is going to ask even more questions, is going to wonder even more, and while the original Sun-ho's records are buried very deeply, Hyun's foster mother could recall them if Hyun asked.

He hopes he didn't show too much. The face of Jung Sun-ho is hard to keep track of sometimes. Jung Sun-ho is not Min and Sun-ho has no official excuse to be able to press Park Ji-woo like that.

"Lee Hyun did very well," Min says, and risks a look at him.

Hyun's expression is very, very thoughtful. "Yes," and his voice sounds empty. "Yes, we did well. I think I am done here. So I will leave."

Attorney Park's footsteps sound fast, hobnails rattling on the floor, and Min isn't turned around all the way before a hand catches his arm and steers him hard against the wall.

Min relaxes automatically, straight-backed and conscious of everything he could do to Attorney Park if he chose to. This is so familiar, this breath in his face, the tight fury, the hardness of all the bones in their hands in concert, all those straining tendons of the palm.

Min has never seen Attorney Park so angry. "You ought to have discussed it with me," tight-faced, white-faced. "Your suspicions -- your theories -- you should have told us before you walked in there! None of us knew!"

"I had an idea," Hyun says, hands in pockets.

"Oh, did you? Then you also should have told us. This is not acceptable. This is absolutely not acceptable behaviour. It is unprofessional and deceptive and I am disappointed, Attorney Jung."

Min's stomach curls in on itself. He swallows acid, licks his lips. "I apologise. I'm very sorry." He bows as deeply as he can while Attorney Park is holding onto his arm. "I'm sorry, Attorney Park."

He thought he did well. He thought … he thought it was good. They cleared Park Ji-woo of the Ha Ki-bang case and established a potential suspect for the Oh Tae-bong case. He thought Attorney Park would like him more, not less. He didn't think he would disappoint Attorney Park.

It's a pang, and it bothers him that there's a pang at all. He shouldn't care in the slightest about Attorney Park's opinion of him or his professionalism. He shouldn't, and he didn't, but he does. But he shouldn't.

But he does.

"You are on probation," Attorney Park says. "Overstep one more time, go off like this on your own without working with your team or clearing it with your superiors, and you're sacked. Is that clear?"

Min breathes. "Yes, sir."

Attorney Park exhales in his face. "Really. The nerve of you. That was dangerous, Attorney Jung!" voice rising. "You could easily have compromised the entire case with your reckless speculation! Are you insane? Really, this kid. Never do that again. Never!"

"Yes, sir," Min says again.

Attorney Park sighs. "Just go home for now and come to my office tomorrow."

He shuts himself in the conference room with Team Leader Choi, and Min puts his hands in his pockets for lack of anything better to do with them. He feels aimless, wrong-footed. He thought it was good. That he did well. But … he didn't, after all.

He can't call Joon-young with Hyun here, and Ja-hee is working, so she can't take him. Buses don't go close to the prison, for obvious reasons, and neither do taxis.

"How are you getting home?" Hyun asks him.

Min shrugs. "I drove him here."

He studies Min. Min has no idea what it is about him that hyung's looking at. His body? His face? Someone Min reminds him of? Hyung is hard to read sometimes. "Come with me. I'll take you to lunch."

"Free lunch!" Ja-hee flicks her fingers at him. "Go go. Get out of here. You did your job, now I'll do mine. Scoot."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't update if you kill me. :P

Ja-hee texts him while he and Hyun are in traffic. _u were great! :) :) so proud of lil bro! fighting!_

It helps. There shouldn't be anything to help to begin with, but it helps.

"You've dealt with men like him before," Hyun says, waiting for a turn signal. "You're familiar with them."

No point hiding it now. "Yes."

"Very familiar," like it's a test of some sort.

"I am good at my job," Min says.

Hyun scoffs and takes the turn with a smooth revolution of the wheel, letting it slide back into place under his palms. "That's not it. You know that's not it."

"No," Min agrees. "That is not it."

Hyun says nothing. This is, Min suspects, one of those circumstances where Hyun wants a public place to remind himself to keep his voice down and think through his words. Min is fine with that. His arm aches as it is.

***

Hyun bypasses the restaurant altogether and leads him to the elevator.

"Did you change your mind?" Min asks.

He shakes his head. "I'm not hungry for food."

Min bites his tongue and follows, unsurprised when Hyun pushes him back against the door of his hotel room and tears his trousers down his legs, his mouth wet against Min's, the front of his trousers hot and full with his cock.

Min's willing. Min is always willing, will always be for his hyung, and he groans, offers himself, all of himself for hyung to fuck, and the bite of fingers against his scalp and squeezing his cheeks is welcome and familiar and arousing. He scrabbles at Hyun's zip, tugs it down and slips his hand inside to stroke. The heavy curl of his cock inside his underwear is so large that the sides are lifted enough for Min to simply reach through the gap and curl his fingers around his cock and squeeze.

Neither of them have condoms in reach, and for a disheveled, wildly uncertain moment, braced on the coffee table with his legs spread and his trousers down around his shins and his jacket restraining his arms behind his back, shoes scuffing on the carpet, condensation and sweat wetting the glass under his cheek, Min is certain hyung is going to fuck him without anything at all, is going to hold him open and push in dry.

He'd let him. He would let him. He'd even enjoy it.

If this is what hyung will give him, Min will take it, and he relaxes, holds his breath when Hyun's knuckles press either side of his hole and spread him open. Hyun spits, and the trickle of it between his cheeks is disgusting but he can feel the wet of it on the tip of Hyun's cock. Hyun pushes, hard, pushes in with inexorable, steady pressure, and Min answers it with a long push of his own to ease hyung's way. He feels his cock start to go in, his arse start to give way. Even that fraction hurts enough that his mouth waters and the backs of his knees cramp with tension.

Hyun pauses, his cock thick and warm and skidding, the underside riding against Min's crack, and Min can only hear his own shallowly uneven breathing.

"What am I doing?" Hyun says. He sounds soft. Uncertain.

Min swallows. He doesn't know if it's rhetorical, if it's about sex or about everything. "You were going to fuck me."

"Why are you letting me do this?" Hyun sounds stranger still now. "Why are you allowing me to -- doesn't it hurt?"

Min breathes in. He doesn't move. "Of course it hurts."

"God fucking damn it. Get up. _Get up_."

Min clambers to his feet, bewildered, and when he turns around Hyun looks -- furious, eyes raking his body with such ferocity that Min fights the impulse to cower. He's looking at Min like Min is beneath him, and Min doesn't understand. Hyung gave Min away, of course he could look at him like this. But Min is Jung Sun-ho, this is Sun-ho's body as far as he's let Hyun know. He shouldn't be looking at Sun-ho like this. He shouldn't. What did he do to earn it?

"Put your clothes back on."

Hyun shuts himself in the bathroom and Min pulls up his trousers and fixes his tie, fingers numb.

He doesn't understand what he did wrong. He doesn't understand.

Min takes off his shoes and jacket now that he has the opportunity and sits on the couch for lack of a better idea. He's answered three emails and deleted or forwarded eight by the time Hyun comes out of the bathroom, water soaking the collar of his shirt and spiking his hair. He looks calmer. He looks like he has questions.

He doesn't actually want to know what sorts of questions hyung might have, now that it comes to it, and he thinks of making excuses.

"I want to do something different," Hyun says before Min can come up with a good reason to give up time with hyung, and he sits at the far end of the couch, patting his knee. "Give me your feet."

Min is truly, honestly confused. "Why?"

"Because," Hyun says. "Come on."

"Oh, well, because," he mutters, and turns on the couch and puts his feet up, leaning back against the armrest to see what Hyun is doing. But he doesn't have to see it, because Hyun pulls off one of his socks and wraps his hands around his feet, thumbs stroking the arch. Min jerks back. "What are you doing that for?"

Hyun doesn't let go of his foot, only pulls it back. "Because," he says.

He leans against the couch again, uneasy, and watches him focus on his feet, feels his thumbs rubbing sore spots on the underside, his fingers finding the ache in the inside of his ankle and soothing it with firm strokes.

"Have you had something like this before?"

"No," Min says. "Is this is an apology? You don't need to apologise. It was fine."

Hyun's hands go still for a moment, then continue, and the gentleness of his fingers on the hard skin around his heel makes him swallow back the prickle of tears. It feels like being taken care of again. By someone who would wipe his mouth for him and clean his shirt and find the red pencil in the middle of the couch cushions when Min was too afraid of getting grit under his nails if he tried looking for it himself. He hated that feeling and Hyun indulged him. Hyun always found his pencils for him, and their father's glasses when he fell asleep reading and folded them on his chest.

But hyung didn't look for him. Min must have lost too many pencils.

"No. You earned a foot rub today," Hyun says. "You did well."

Min rolls up his cuffs and eases a cushion under his back, slumping. Joon-young hated slouching and now it hurts his back to do it, but just for a little while he wants to be someone Joon-young hates. He wants to slouch and spend time with his hyung. He wants his hyung to touch him. That's what this is, isn't it? Touching him?

"I can do you next," Min offers. "It looks easy."

"No. Just relax."

Min doesn't understand, and Hyun catches his eye before Min can look away or hide his confusion, and Min lets it show, wears it like armour. Better confusion than … anything else that might give a hint to his identity. Like too much pleasure, or tears, or anything sentimental like that.

Park Ji-woo isn't the only person whose vice is sentiment.

But still he and Min are not enough alike.

Still, hyung said he did well.

"It's called non-reciprocal physical affection," Hyun says, still watching him.

Min scowls and yanks his foot back. Of course it was just a lie to get him to soften. Of course it was. Why would it be anything else? Why else would the hyung that threw him away say anything kind to him? "I know what that is."

Hyun grabs his ankle. "So let me. Just because. Like I said. Let me."

"I don't want to owe you anything," Min says, and the simmering ever-present hatred spikes so viciously his eyes cross. "Get your hands off me."

Hyun lets go of his ankle, slowly, fingers dragging over his skin, and Min hates himself for the sound he makes. He gathers himself at the end of the couch, sitting up and unrolling his cuffs. This was a mistake. It was a mistake to follow him back to the hotel, it was a mistake to sit in the interview, it was a mistake to meet him at the cafe or see his talk, it was a mistake. It was all a mistake.

"When are you leaving?" Min asks. He refuses to look at hyung. Refuses.

He hears Hyun sigh. "Friday afternoon. In the morning I'm on a panel at the conference. Let me ask you something. Those psychopaths that you know. The ones like Park Ji-woo. Did they touch you? Are you familiar in that way?"

Min thinks of Joon-young, and Hyun must see something in his face because he reaches for Min again and Min, busy with Joon-young's voice in his head and Joon-young's hands and the knowledge that Joon-young is still, still the only one who understands, can't quite collect himself enough to willingly and consciously pull away from Hyun touching him again.

"From that expression -- yes, right?" Hyun asks. His hand is warm on Min's, warm and strong. "It's pretty common. People like familiarity. If that's what you're familiar with, then given a choice you pick it unconsciously. Your non-exclusive is most likely an asshole too."

Joon-young is Joon-young. Does that make him an asshole? Min doesn't know. "You're the least bad for me that anyone's ever been," Min says.

Hyun shakes his head. "You need better standards."

"You need to look in a mirror," Min says. "What standard could be better?" What _could_ be better than hyung?

"That's not the point," hyung says, but he smiles a little. "You need not to let me do those things. I got carried away this time, but it's not right of me to do that. And it's not right of you to let me hurt you. I'll keep better track next time and pick up materials first, and you keep track of how you feel instead of letting me do whatever I want. Deal?"

Min looks at him. "I wouldn't have minded," he says truthfully.

"That's also not the point," Hyun says. "I don't want to hear that you don't mind when we have sex. I want to hear that you want me to do more of it. It's a new rule."

"And don't let you touch me without a condom in your pocket?" Min asks, dry as he can manage through the relief that hyung is still here, talking to him. Hyung doesn't want him to go. Does he? It doesn't seem like he does. He's talking like there might be a next time. "Is that also a rule?"

Hyun hums. "That's more my responsibility than yours, but it could be."

"Let's both," Min says, "have condoms at all times."

"Sounds like a plan." Hyun holds out his hand. "Deal?"

Min takes his hand and shakes it, feeling silly. Also, oddly enough, cared for in a way he's ever really experienced before. Joon-young has never said such things like this to him. Joon-young is diligent because that's what the textbook says, Min's seen his copious marginalia, but Min has the feeling hyung's never needed to read a textbook. "Deal."

He doesn't know what to do. But perhaps he can choose bravery, and instead of getting up and leaving he puts his feet back in Hyun's lap.

"Then show me again," Min says. "This non-reciprocal physical affection of yours."

***

They go downstairs afterwards for a late lunch. Being touched so much without sex feels strange, but not bad. Unsettling. But not uncomfortable. His hyung wants to touch him, and Min likes that. He likes it very much.

The afternoon light is beautiful, thick and pale with winter, and Min orders what he likes and a bottle of white wine for himself after Hyun says he's paying for it.

Hyun raises an eyebrow at him after the server leaves. "Are you sure?"

Min pours himself a glass of water and holds it up for him. "One water to one wine. That's the trick."

"Sleep deprivation affects alcohol tolerance," Hyun says.

"It's not that bad," Min says.

***

It isn't that bad, but it's close.

Min is a little drunk. Even with water to prevent a bad morning and the rich food, he is a little bit drunk.

Hyun's had two or three glasses himself but he seems fine, steady and amused.

"Let's go back to your room," Min says once they've finished eating and the fourth glass starts to kick in and make the world feel weighty, ponderous. "I want to --" Min pauses. He probably shouldn't say that in public.

"I can guess what you want," Hyun says, laughing.

Min huffs. "Are you laughing at me?" Walking isn't hard, and moving isn't hard, and talking isn't hard. It's that zone between being too drunk to feel any of his lips and being sober enough to enunciate without effort.

"A little," Hyun says, and he steers him to the bed. "Let's get your clothes off."

"Yes," Min agrees, and with Hyun's help he strips naked. It's a pleasure to squirm on the blankets just to feel their warmth and softness, the plush of down, and he soaks in the feeling of it. Everything is rougher and delicacy is blunted, but Min doesn't mind. There's not much delicate about Hyun's mouth on his, and Min kisses him back with enthusiasm. He wants him. He wants hyung, so much.

"I want you inside me," Min sighs. "Will you fuck me?"

The dangerous thing here is his mouth. He can't afford to say -- so many things. There are so many things he shouldn't say.

"Are you going to remember this tomorrow?" Hyun asks. He sounds amused, and Min rolls his head to watch him take off his trousers and pull condoms and lube out of the nightstand. "You're a bit drunk."

"I always remember," Min says. "I always remember everything." He spreads his legs. "Come here. Should I call you hyung? Would that make you move faster? Hyung."

"Don't," Hyun says.

Min sighs. "Why not? Pretend it's him. Pretend I'm someone you like. Please fuck me, hyung."

Hyun's face colours. "That's not sexy."

Min laughs. "You're lying. Hyung. Hyuuuuung."

"Stop," he says, and Min groans at the press of his slick rubbery fingers. "Stop that. It's not sexy. It makes me think of being eight. I didn't do this when I was eight."

"Ahh, you should have. It's fun. Isn't it fun?" Min says cheerfully. Hyung is touching him. Hyung wants to touch him, and hyung is going to fuck him. Yes.

Hyun's fingers go still. "What?"

"Why are you stopping? Don't stop," Min complains. "Hyung, don't stop."

"Don't call me that. What do you mean, I --" Hyun breaks off. "This isn't the time."

Min nods and reaches for his wrist. "Mmm. Fuck me. If you don't I'm going to keep calling you hyung, hyung. Hyung."

"Shut up," Hyun says, and puts a hand over his mouth.

He laughs under his palm, feeling warm and loose. Min can call Hyun hyung again. Even if it's pretending to be a joke the fact is that he can, and it trips so familiarly off his tongue and makes his thighs ache with how much he wants to wrap himself around him and have him inside. He wants his hyung. Wants him.

"You're greedy," Hyun says. He doesn't look like he minds, red-faced and his hair spiked in odd directions, his mouth open as he looks Min up and down and up and down, staring at him. It feels good to be looked at, and Min squirms obligingly, showing off. Hyun wants to look at him, and it makes him giddy.

Hyun's arms come up under his knees and push them up, and Min groans, sucking in air, and reaches for him, clawing his hands up his back to drag him close for kisses, one and six and twenty of them, again and again, his cock fat and hot inside him.

"Hyung," Min groans. "Hyung."

"Don't call me that," Hyun pants. "Not sexy."

"You're lying," Min laughs, sing-songs really, and Hyun kisses him again, so good and thorough that Min's hips arch of their own accord. He feels like a collection of limbs attached to a heart with no brain in the picture to speak of, legs and arms and thudding pulse, and it's wonderful.

***

Min's half-asleep by the time Hyun comes out of the bathroom with a wipe to clean his stomach and thighs and swipe between his legs, and it feels good to be taken care of like this. Joon-young is a lot less delicate when he moves Min's legs about, and Hyun's hand on the inside of his knee is warm and gentle and bare. No gloves. It feels good.

He rolls onto his flank, head and body buzzing, content to just be warm and feel the exhausted static in his muscles. Min is vaguely aware that this is incredibly, extremely dangerous. But hyung is taking care of him.

"I don't know anything about your family. Were you someone's dongsaeng once?" Hyun asks him, wiping sweat off Min's back. "Did you have a hyung?"

"It was a long time ago," Min murmurs. "He didn't want me anymore."

There's an odd noise, like someone being strangled and managing to pry one or two fingers off their throat. "Did he touch you?"

Min yawns. Such a stupid question. Of course hyung didn't touch him. Hyung was a good hyung until he gave Min away. "I wanted him to. I could be your dongsaeng."

"No," Hyun says. He sounds unsteady. "I'd rather just have Sun-ho."

"So ... just your port girl," Min says sleepily. "No dongsaeng. No hyung." He can't hide the sadness. "Just your port girl. At least, am I a good port girl?"

Hyun kisses the back of his neck. "You are." There's a pause long enough for Min to close his eyes and start to drift, and then: "Min."

He levers open an eyelid with effort. "Hmm?"

"Lee Min. Do you know who took him?"

Something about this is not good, he can tell, but he's too drunk and warm to care. Something is not good. Something he shouldn't answer. Something he should hold his tongue about. Joon-young will be angry. Joon-young will ... something awful. Give him that look. Something like that. But hyung wants him to be his port girl, and that's something, isn't it? That's nice. Maybe he'll come back and fuck Min again, next time.

"Uncle, of course."

"Who is your uncle?"

Something about this is not good. There's something wrong.

Being his port girl is not enough, but it's nice. It's so nice.

But this is hyung. Hyung is asking him. Hyung, who wants him. Hyun. His hyung, and he got to call him hyung again, one more time, one last time. That feels wonderful too.

"Lee Joon-young," Min sighs, and he doesn't quite know when he falls asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

Min wakes up in the dim, careful not to open his eyes. He can feel the weird too-awake strain in his eyes that comes with processing all the alcohol in his body, the remains of drunkenness. He stretches his fingers and the blunt feeling of the coverlet tells him he's not yet sober.

"You're awake."

Min looks around. Hyun is stretched out beside him with a laptop on his knees, wearing glasses and drinking. It's good to see him, and Min rolls onto his back, sprawled naked, and for once he likes it.

"Time?" Min asks. It feels like midnight but he can't see the clock on Hyun's screen.

"Eleven. Do you remember what you said?" Hyun asks. His legs are crossed and he's poised and straight-backed and utterly confident of himself, and Min hates him.

He hates himself more.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid and pathetic. Stupid.

"I remember. Sorry about that, I was tired," Min says. "I meant to say Joon-ho, not Joon-young."

"It just happened," Hyun says, "that you said the wrong name."

"Yes. Probably I was thinking about Lee Joon-young or something like that. You mentioned him in connection with your brother before."

"Then your uncle's name is Lee Joon-ho?"

"Yes. A medical examiner," Min says. "He was a friend of my father's." To a degree that includes 'not at all', and he stifles laughter. "He looks after me."

"Not related?"

"No." Min stretches slowly. "Just kind. Some people are like that. I am sorry."

Hyun is staring, hands unmoving on the keyboard, and Min lets him, twists about to show off some more of his body. He's naked anyway; he might as well.

"I'm awake now," Min says. "Do you want to?" He smiles. "Are you also awake?"

"Brush your teeth first," Hyun says, which is a yes to both.

Min crawls out of bed and goes to the bathroom to do exactly that. He looks awful in the mirror, haggard and strange, eyes bagged. His jaw looks narrower than usual, his cheekbones more prominent and angling his face, and Min supposes he hasn't eaten as much as he should lately. Joon-young's forever lecturing him about eating enough, how unhealthy and innutritious it is to eat out all the time.

Joon-young has been good to him, hasn't he? So good. So much better than a person like Min deserves. Joon-young could have killed him. He knows Joon-young chooses not to kill him every day. He chooses Min's life. He chooses him at his own expense and inconvenience.

Min is chosen, isn't he?

He looks at himself in the mirror and spits foam and rinses and thinks about the mechanics of betrayal. At what point does his duty to Joon-young's choices become more or less than his preference for hyung to be near him and touch him? Hyung will leave. Hyung always leaves, and then he will have no-one but Joon-young. If there is no Joon-young, Min will be alone.

The thought raises goosebumps over his arms. He can't be alone. He can't. He can't.

There isn't a way out. There never was. He is Joon-young's. It was convenient for hyung for Min to go with Joon-young. He was thrown away or given or however Hyun wants to call it and the result is the same. Hyung gave him up.

This is fantasy. A few days of grudging conversation and excellent sex cannot be the same as the life he lives with Joon-young. It cannot, in practical terms, be equal. It can't and it isn't. So he will take what he can, and ... if Hyun finds out, if Hyun puts the pieces Min let slip together, he will keep the memory of the time he has stolen, the touch he has taken. He'll take it all.

Min looks at himself and sees nothing more of particular interest and finishes washing.

When he comes out Hyun's put the laptop and glasses away, already naked on the bed and tugging at his cock. The lights are on now, all of them. 

Min ought to take advantage of being seen. Knowing hyung wants him is different from being told again, and he wants to be told. He turns and poses in the doorway, lifting his leg and balancing his knee against the door, his fingers reaching back to spread his cheeks and show himself scrubbed and clean. Joon-young likes to watch him like this and he looks over his shoulder and sees Hyun biting his lip, cheeks red. Min was right. They're alike in this too.

"Do you want me?" Min asks. "Do you want this?" Normally he wouldn't like it, doesn't particularly think of it one way or the other as anything special, but this time when he lubes his fingers and dabs inside himself it sends pleasure racing down his legs. Hyun is watching, hyung wants to watch him, and that makes the difference.

Hyun groans. "Yes. Come here. Let me watch you."

Min misses the rubber mat, but he supposes Hyun wouldn't think of such things, and he mostly forgets about it when Hyun rolls a condom on him and straddles his hips, taking hold of Min's cock.

"Wait," Min ventures, reaching to stop him. "Are you ready?"

"I'm prepared," Hyun says.

But Min remembers his reaction when Min let him fuck him without lube and doesn't let go of his thigh. "Show me. You didn't want me to let you. Then I won't let you either."

Hyun smiles at him, surprisingly broad, eyes crinkling, and his kiss is deep and plunging and lovely, withdrawing to stroke their lips together only to taste his tongue again, and Min moans into it, holds onto him, too gratified and surprised to think of responding properly.

"What was that for?" Min asks when Hyun sits back up. The kisses leave him breathless, his face and chest hot.

"For the value of reciprocity," Hyun tells him seriously. "Okay." He lifts his cock and balls, shows Min the slick between his legs, and Min rolls a condom over four fingers, stretching it down past his knuckles to secure it, and reaches to touch him. To be sure.

His fingers slide in. "Oh," Min says, surprised enough that words fail him. Hyun feels hot inside, textured and wet and open. He must have put at least four fingers inside himself, or some sort of dildo. It feels like he used a quarter of the bottle, he's so slippery. "Did you think about me?" Min asks, stroking the tips of three fingers in and out and around, fascinated by the ease of it. Joon-young never lets him do anything like this.

Hyun's voice is heavy and deep. "Yeah. I thought about you."

Min understands why people swear when they have sex, now. Because there is nothing to say to that which could describe his feelings other than cheap, common epithets for the unnameable feeling that is hyung, opening himself, preparing himself like this, while thinking about him. Min wasn't even in the room. Min hadn't asked. It was hyung's choice.

"I don't know what to say," he confesses. "That's ... that's --" Hyun's smiling at him, and Min smiles back. "That's hot," he tells him awkwardly. "That is really, really hot." He swallows. "What did you think about? About me?"

Hyun's eyes half-close, his mouth falling open, when Min dares to push in enough of his fingers that his pinky goes in too, just inside the rim. "Oh, you know. Your cock. You. Your face. You can go deeper."

"What about my face?" He eases his fingers further in, very slow, and pauses when Hyun tightens around him and grabs for his wrist, his head falling back. It shows the line of his throat, the way he swallows over and over, and Min wants to bite it. He wants the reality of him in his mouth, to scrape his teeth over his jugular and feel it on both sides instead of the odd, muffled half-blank that is Joon-young. Joon-you doesn't let Min bite him. "Tell me."

"Fuck me," Hyun says. It's almost a whine. "Fuck me and I'll tell you."

Min grins up at him. He likes this, likes the feeling of power, and waggles his fingers inside him, tapping his walls back and forth. "No. Tell me first."

Hyun groans, shuddering around his hand, counting to himself with two fingers pinched around the base of his cock. He exhales so deeply his stomach concaves and breathes in until his chest rises, deep and slow, and Min holds still, eager for the sight of his vulnerability. Hyun only stops when his shoulders ease down and he loosens around Min's fingers. When he opens his eyes he looks less fixed than usual, less controlled.

"Your face is ... it's beautiful when you come. I like your smile." Hyun swallows. "Your face is the best part when you blow me. You have good expressions when I surprise you and it's cute when you pout. Now may I sit on your dick?"

"I don't pout," Min says.

Hyun chuckles. "You do." His hips shift, and he tightens again around Min's hand. "Do I have to ask you again?"

"Maybe." But he draws out his fingers, rolls off the wet condom and settles his hand around his cock to point it up and steady it for Hyun's descents. The bob of his cock and his heavy balls are entrancing but when Hyun gathers up both and holds them out of the way the view is even better.

Hyun flattens his palm on Min's chest, angles himself and lowers his body so, so steadily that it translates as a smooth, slow slide of heat over his cock like a mouth slowly taking him deep in one go, but it's not, it's hyung. It's hyung, wanting him inside him, and Min wants to climb into his skin, wants to peel it off him and wear it. He wants hyung, all of him, he wants all of him.

Hyun shuts his eyes, opens them, shuts them again, and when he settles down, their bodies flush together and his thighs rubbing coarsely against Min's hips, his expression profoundly beautiful and sweat shining on his chest and stomach, Min has to struggle not to say extremely pathetic things like _please don't leave_.

***

"I do have work in the morning," Min says once they've showered and are lying together in the ridiculously nice bathrobes. He's sweated off the rest of the alcohol now and Hyun's kisses are still his favourite thing about him.

"I assumed so," Hyun says, and kisses him again.

Min returns it eagerly, putting his hands inside hyung's bathrobe and making a mess of his neat folds, the better to find his cheeks and squeeze them. Min likes it, when he's just been fucked, perhaps hyung does too.

Hyun's groan is very gratifying.

"You're supposed to be the sensible one," Min says.

"We're both meant to be sensible people," Hyun says. "So stop that."

"Stop kissing me," Min retorts, and Hyun chuckles and proceeds to ignore him for long, wonderful minutes. "I do have to sleep," he says. "Attorney Park is going to yell at me."

"You did well nevertheless," Hyun says.

Min smiles at him. It's still wonderful to think hyung would be proud of him, even a little. "He doesn't like you either. He'd yell at you too if he could." He pets hyung's back under the bathrobe just for the pleasure of having him near. "But, thank you."

"I'm not much better. I interrogate you," Hyun says, kissing his ear, and Min turns his jaw and offers his neck. "I jump to conclusions. I am suspicious of you."

"I know," Min says. "You saw another side of me in the interview. Didn't you?"

"More of it, perhaps. It convinced me that there are things you aren't telling me about my brother, about Lee Joon-young. Even if you are right and your uncle is a different person, I still think you know something about him. About them. I think my brother talked to you. You said you recognised each other as victims. Isn't that what you meant?"

Victims? Ah, Min understands now why Hyun sounds so awkward, so fixed. Hyung thinks Jung Sun-ho's brother abused him. Hyun's ignorance is sweet. He could tell him so very many things about Joon-young. About Joon-young's methods, and Joon-young's dislikes. How he is in bed. The fact that Min wondered what it would be like to do it with hyung the first time he saw people have sex. The strength of Joon-young's hands. The thickness of his cock. How much Min owes him.

"Lee Min did talk to me," Min admits. "It's complicated. Some things aren't possible. Or the timing is wrong for now. There are things you will not like to hear. Things I promised not to say to anyone, especially not to you." He says something he's heard Joon-young say. "My word is important to me."

Hyun nods against his neck. "Attorney-client privilege?"

"Something like that," Min says.

"But it was Lee Joon-young that took him? I don't remember," he murmurs. "I wish I did. But I don't remember."

"Yes," Min says. He can at least give hyung this. "It was definitely Lee Joon-young."

Hyun nods again. Min can feel the quick movement of his lashes, the tension of his body. "I thought so. But I wasn't sure. That's the important thing," and he sighs. "The rest ... I don't like it, but I can wait for you to tell me when you feel comfortable. You already gave me a good lead."

"I did?" Min asks. "Busan was so long ago."

"He's my brother. Someone will remember him. I will find that person."

"You were lying about waiting for me to feel comfortable," Min says. He's not surprised.

Hyun lifts his head and looks at him. "My brother... I have thought of him for eighteen years. If you think you can keep him from me now that I have a chance to find him, you are wrong."

Min stares up at him, unblinking. "I'm not keeping him from you," he lies. "The person that remembers. Find them first. Look for him. Don't you owe him that?"

"I will," Hyun says. It sounds like an oath. A promise. Very grim and determined. Empty words, most likely, but in this moment it seems hyung is sincere in his wish to find him. "Don't call me hyung in bed again. Don't ever. I don't like it."

"I won't," Min says.

 _Find me, hyung_ , Min doesn't say. _Find me. I'm right here_.

"I'm sure he'd be touched but I have to be up at five," Min says.

He's lying again. He's touched. Once they curl together for sleep he smiles into Hyun's hair.

Hyung is going to look for him. Finally.

***

Joon-young calls while Min's driving to work. He left Hyun's hotel room in a sequence of kisses while getting dressed, Hyun calling him back to bed for one last series before Min leaves. 

These days he keeps a change of clothes in the car and even half-asleep he can apply just enough cologne to make it seem like he's been doing something rakish and not getting drunk and having sex with his brother all night. All it takes is changing his shirt and tie and it's fine.

"Where are you?" Joon-young asks.

Min yawns at him. "I want caffeine. That's where I am." He's actually not as tired as usual but he's not in the mood to be conciliatory. Spending time with hyung cuts as much as it helps, and the cuts run too deep for him to be suitably soft to Joon-young. "I got in trouble yesterday."

"Drug dependency isn't good for you. Did you enjoy your interview together?"

Of course he already knows. Likely Ja-hee told him about Min's marvellous performance.

Min's glad Joon-young isn't there to see him grip the wheel. Likely he can tell anyway -- Joon-young's ability to guess what Min is doing only seems to improve with distance -- but it makes Min feel better to strangle something, even if it's just a circle of rubber and plastic. "I did. He still doesn't know who I am. I am Jung Sun-ho, talented junior attorney. That is all."

"Are you having fun?" Joon-young asks. "Playing your game."

"I am," Min says. "It's fun to play with him. Sometimes he looks at me like he remembers, but then he doesn't after all. He can't find out anything. No-one knows. That's right, isn't it? Uncle."

"Yes," Joon-young says. "But people know more than we think." He sounds like he's somewhere busy, with wind and rustling trees. Min can hear police jargon in the background. A body, then. "I think I will also meet him soon."

Oh, that's right. He can do this. Yes. "I told him," Min says, "you are my uncle. No relation. Just a kind person."

"I see." Joon-young sounds like he's swallowing glass. "How did that come about?"

"Your name came up," Min says. "I said a little too much."

"Did you," Joon-young says. "How much?"

"I told him you were a medical examiner. I think he will also be interested in meeting you." Min smiles and he hopes Joon-young can hear it. Pettiness is so very satisfying. "I think it will go well."

Joon-young hangs up.

He laughs. It feels _so good_ to force Joon-young to meet _his_ hyung on _his_ terms.

He's going to pay for it, but paying for it means he did something to pay for, and this time it's even worth it. Oh, is it worth it.

Min isn't in need of caffeine anymore, and at a red light he texts hyung his first selca. The first few tries are bad and he has to try at a few more red lights to get the angles right -- it's hard to pretend to have bedroom eyes, or what he imagines he looks like when he's having sex, when he's never seen himself -- but finally he takes a picture he's happy with. 

Hyung texts him a few hours later. _That is accurate and unfair._

Looking at his text settles him after hearing the results of Attorney Park's decision. He'll be on probation for three months and he's demoted to handling infractions like tickets and shoplifting and minor assaults. 

But it's fine. He got to spend time with hyung. He got to show what he can do, and Hyun was proud of him. Hyun said he did well. For the first time in twenty years hyung is proud of him.

Three months is nothing compared to that.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Closer, and closer, and closerrrrrrrr...

Min shifts his phone to his other hand, accepts the coffee Chun-seok hands him, and waits for Hyun to answer his phone. Even though Min's on probation Chun-seok is bringing him coffee and passing him slices of his cases for second opinions.

The fraction of anything like politeness or diligence or communal responsibility that it takes to have loyalty like this offered freely will never cease to amaze him. Is this being liked? Is this stupidity? Surely Chun-seok is aware Min is an asshole. He's called Min an asshole three times today already. And yet, because he owes Min, because they have completed transactions with each other that people call 'friendship', he does this.

People are so easy.

Hyun picks up. "I'm leaving tomorrow."

"I know," Min says into the phone. "I could buy you dinner."

"I could sleep on the plane," Hyun says. "If you wanted to stay over. I'm checking out before ten."

"Then we'll do that," Min says.

"Who the fuck are you talking to?" Chun-seok leans closer to stare at him and Min draws back, scowling.

"None of your business."

"You were smiling," Chun-seok says. "Men don't smile at their phones unless it's a girl. Who is it? Is she pretty?"

"Superlatively," Min says, just for the choking, laughing noise Hyun makes in his ear. "Really it's none of your business. Look at her March phone records and go away."

"Hey, I'm the generous person sharing my stairwell with you," Chun-seok complains. "Even brought you coffee, too! You're an asshole."

"Yes. Go away," Min says.

Chun-seok grumbles and hides the folder in his suit jacket, shutting the door behind him.

It leaves him alone on the stairs, a tall box of concrete and hand-rails and grimy, grim concrete steps that echo, and Min sips coffee. "That was a colleague."

"I guessed." Hyun sounds amused. "Superlatively pretty?"

Min's face heats. "Yes."

"Well, then you're definitely coming tonight, right?"

He smiles. "What do you think?"

"I think I want to remember you all year," Hyun says. "I don't know when I'll be back, so ... let's do well."

"Oh." His cheeks hurt. Min is starting to fathom people who stand around in public places looking stupid and distracted and mooning into their phones and blocking everyone else with their ridiculous smiles and emotions. If he were in a public place he would absolutely be doing the same thing.

"I'll stop by my house for a change of clothes first," Min says, forcing himself to be practical. "It might be midnight or so."

"That's fine. I'll sleep on the plane," Hyun says. "See you later."

Min holds in the urge to ask if he means it. "See you soon."

Chun-seok eyeballs him when Min passes him on the way back to his desk. "How pretty is she?"

"Prettier than you," Min says. "Did you request her records yet?"

"Yeah, she's been talking to this Yang Seun-hoon guy. Total rich dick. But nothing really connected to the suspect in this case."

Min considers what he knows of Seun-hoon. "Can I see a picture?"

Chun-seok shows him the passport photo on her resume. She's definitely Seun-hoon's type. Long dark hair, serious face. Seun-hoon always likes to make the serious ones laugh, Min included, it makes him feel special.

"Isn't she super pretty?"

Her name is Kang Ji-seo. Seun-hoon's current girlfriend and she's a character witness for a man Min knows for a fact Seun-hoon detests.

Combined with the way Seun-hoon's been talking about her lately, his worries over feeling less close to her these days, the likelihood of Seun-hoon killing her is very high now. If Seun-hoon kills her at the wrong time the defense's case will collapse, but it's not a big case anyhow. Not much profile or prestige either way.

"Yes. Too serious, though," Min says, and hands back the resume. "Good luck."

He has just under forty-five minutes left in his lunch break. Long enough to tell Joon-young about it and ask what he thinks.

***

Joon-young is still angry. It surprises Min. Joon-young isn't often expressively angry, but he says he's concerned about Min. Concerned that spending time with Hyun will affect him negatively once Hyun has to leave for his job in America. Concerned that he will get his hopes up and hurt himself. Concerned that Min will make too much of things and break his own heart. Concerned that when Hyun leaves Min will do something drastic or stupid or both. Concerned for his state of mind. Concerned that he will throw away long-term for short-term. All these concerns for Min.

"I didn't know you were so worried," Min says. The tea is strong today. Joon-young must have been thinking very deeply to let it steep so long. "I'm not a reckless person."

"That's true. But you are impulsive when it comes to your hyung."

Min sips again. "I am," he acknowledges. There's no point pretending that hyung is anything but a weakness. "But I'm not interested in helping him find me. I want to see him. That's all. Have you seen him?"

"He's kinder than I expected him to be," Joon-young says.

"I didn't expect anything," Min says.

Joon-young smiles. "Yes, you did," he says gently. "How has it been?"

"Is it hard for you?"

He nods. "I remember him being very small. Now he's as tall as I am. The same is for you too, as well. I remember when you were very small." He tilts his head and studies Min with one of his half-expressions, one of the ones he doesn't know exist to practice in the mirror, and the knowledge of how much he needs Joon-young is stifling.

Hyung he can handle these days, if barely. Hyun leaves. Hyun doesn't want him enough to stay. That's what Hyun does. But Joon-young -- he cannot imagine doing without Joon-young. Joon-young will never leave him. Min knows he will one day, of course he will -- march of time, march of progress, the slow whittling of his physical firmity, but he'll never choose to leave Min. They'll always be together. Min will always have him.

Joon-young so often seems infinite: infinitely clever, infinitely ignorant, infinitely generous, infinitely cruel. Infinitely frustrating. Immortal.

"The conference ends tomorrow," Min says, and sips more tea. "It'll be easier when he isn't here."

He's not telling the truth, not quite. Telling full exact truths to Joon-young with their mountains of bureaucratic detail is unwise. But he's also not lying.

"Are you sure about that?" Joon-young leans forward, hands draped across his knees, and Min remembers when Joon-young saw the gesture in a drama and practiced it until the motion came easily. A sign of wanting to be close with the other person's ideas, Joon-young told him then. Physical closeness encourages mental vulnerability. Both of them learned most of their manners from dramas but Joon-young chose what he learned.

Min looks at him. Joon-young using him the gesture now means he wants Min to trust him. Min wants to trust him too. "Uncle ... do you know if it will?"

The problem is that it has been hard, not only because Hyun still doesn't know who he is, still isn't forming the patterns Min both does and doesn't want him to make, but also because Hyun is not supposed to be a creature of such... attachments. He's not supposed to look at Min like that, at anyone like that, Min or Sun-ho. He's not supposed to tell him his face is unfair, and Min is not supposed to like it. He's not supposed to finger himself in readiness for Min's cock. He's not supposed to want to sleep skin-to-skin with Sun-ho.

Min likes it, but hyung's not supposed to _do_ that. To act like Min is a person he likes.

"I don't know," Joon-young says. "Sometimes it is true that it helps. Other times, when the person leaving means more than the ones left, it doesn't help." He tilts his head a little further, looking at Min, looking him in the eye. Joon-young has a preference for eyes. Particularly Min's. "How much does he still mean to you? After all this time."

He knows what Joon-young is really asking.

Sometimes all Min can see when he looks at Hyun are the places where Joon-young can or will place traps, one after the other, to kill him or use him or influence him or wound him or bind him or all of those things and more, if he but knows more about Hyun. If he knows more about the things Min keeps from him.

Fucking his little brother is the sort of thing Hyun probably would care about, and if not him personally then his friends and employers. It is the sort of weapon that would be handing Joon-young his brother's mind and life to do as he pleases.

Funny how it's talking to Joon-young that makes him realise things like this. But it's always been Joon-young for him, hasn't it? Joon-young understands him. Joon-young helps Min make sense of himself, the practicalities of being Jung Sun-ho and Lee Min at the same time.

"I hate him." That is still true. He does still hate him. "But my feelings don't matter. He's leaving. He is leaving without looking for Lee Min, and ... you are not," and that is his answer to Joon-young about who of the two of them he loves more. That is his answer to Joon-young. "You won't. If I disappeared, you would look. Isn't that so?"

Joon-young looks pleased. "That's right. You've never been an inconvenience to me. I would do whatever it took to make you safe."

It's hard to look at Joon-young. Min knows what Joon-young means by that, too.

Joon-young took care of him. Joon-young changed clothes on his head and learned about food. Joon-young has stolen for him and called in a hundred favours and earned a thousand more for Min's sake. Joon-young took him to school. Joon-young taught him to read and write and add. Joon-young taught him to drive. Joon-young gave him sketchbooks and pencils and told him to try again, took him to art stores and tried the pencils with him until they found a set Min liked, no matter how much it cost.

Min has, in practical terms, been an enormous inconvenience, an enormous waste of effort, an enormous squandering of time and investment.

But Joon-young is a better person than Min and doesn't see it that way. For him, unlike hyung, Min is worth these things.

"Why did you take care of me?" Min asks.

Joon-young doesn't bother to smile. Some things are too meaningful for smiles, and Min can see the intent on his face, how he angles his chin and cheeks to show it best. This will be something he wants Min to believe. "You are my family. You should know. Don't you?"

Min drops his eyes. "I know."

There is no other explanation, is there? There isn't. Joon-young has to have some kind of meaning in Min, or it doesn't make sense. The meaning being family is as good as any other meaning. It's powerful enough as a cultural obligation to make sense.

He thinks of Hyun again. The seriousness of his voice when he said he would find someone else who remembered Lee Min. The way he exhaled when Min told him he thought Hyun gave him away. Like the idea, just the idea, hurt him more than anything Min could have come up with to deliberately inflict pain.

There are so many things about hyung he doesn't really understand anymore now that he's starting to know him again. So many things. So many things Joon-young told him.

Perhaps Joon-young lies to Min as much as Min lies to him?

No. Joon-young doesn't lie.

Hyun is leaving. Hyung is leaving and Min doesn't want to be alone. He can't be alone.

"You're mine too, uncle," Min says, and when Joon-young gets up and locks the door and presses him down, Min lets him, lets the familiarity of knowing his mouth and body soothe his doubts. Joon-young is not someone he should doubt. Joon-young will never leave him.

"Let me help you," he says, and Min lets him. He needs help. He needs Joon-young.

Joon-young ties him and gags him and strokes his skin through his clothes, finding every sore spot and digging in his thumbs and fingers. He kneads his knuckles into the tightness under his collarbones and wipes Min's cheeks when he sobs.

"You'll feel better," Joon-young murmurs. "A little pain now will be okay, won't it? You'll feel better soon." Joon-young has to help him roll over and he tries so hard not to scream when Joon-young's thumbs dig in just above his hips and into the backs of his knees and into his upper arms in a cascade of roiling, nauseous pain that sweat breaks out under his arms and drips from his scalp. Joon-young tells him he's doing well.

Min feels utterly exhausted afterwards, unreasonably limp. He aches, tender and swollen, but Joon-young is right, it does help. He doesn't feel quite so tight or trapped in his skin. But there's too much softness now, he feels too soft and small and Min tries collecting himself as Joon-young tugs the gag out of his mouth. He tries, but Joon-young has to kiss him into stopping the pathetic tears.

"Somatic release, they call it," he says. He daubs topical anaesthetics on the broken skin where Min struggled against the ties and where Joon-young had to dig very hard and smooths the bandages with gentle fingers. "Do you feel better?"

Min nods. He does and he doesn't. He feels beaten, though he hasn't been. No-one's used a weapon on him. It's just Joon-young doing the necessary, isn't it? Helping him, generously. Min wouldn't bother doing this for anyone.

Joon-young apologises for getting carried away, says things Min only half-listens to. Says he was concerned about Min having a hard time pretending to be friendly with the hyung that abandoned him, that he could feel Min being so very stressed over such a little thing and he couldn't let Min go on like that, could he?

Min knows Joon-young will never leave him.

Not because he bothers to make excuses for the way he breathed in Min's gasps like they were oxygen and smiled when he screamed, but because of the way he smooths his hand over Min's hair afterwards, looks at him with the lack of expression that means he's feeling something no drama ever demonstrated well enough to bother copying.

Joon-young needs Min too.

Hyung wants Min, hyung says. But Joon-young needs him.

"Thank you, uncle," and he aches, and he means it and leans into Joon-young's arm when it's offered, drinking the lukewarm tea, his body throbbing in echoing pain that matters less than the way Joon-young kisses his forehead and promises it will get easier.

***

"Your non-exclusive?" Hyun asks when he sees the bandages and swelling proto-bruises and pauses in the middle of taking his shirt off.

"It's fine," Min says, and lies down, naked but for his undershirt. "I can still seduce you."

"Of course you can," Hyun says, and he lies down too, unbuttoning but not unzipping his trousers.

Hyun is more interested in talking than sex, Min discovers. "Is it the wraps? I can take them off."

"No. I think conversation is a better way of imprinting the memory of someone. I don't know when I'll be able to come back and I want to remember both. That's fine with you, right?"

Min nods. "I'm still boring," he warns, shifting onto his side to look at him. He aches. Getting through work after all that was difficult; he felt glassy, unreal, like a hangover under his skin, and even Chun-seok bringing him juice and cake from the lobby vending machine didn't help much.

"That's a lack of imagination," Hyun says. "How did you find the time? You left at five." He touches the edge of a swell on the outside of Min's thigh, and Min is too physically wrung out not to jump away from his fingers. "This looks more recent than that."

"Our lunch break," Min says, and despite his best effort at sounding like this is an entirely normal answer to an entirely normal question it comes out of his mouth gritty and tense.

Hyun nods. "I'll order something, then. You haven't had a chance to eat, right?"

"You're taking this very well," Min says, sitting up to watch him dial.

"If you want my opinion you'll ask for it," Hyun says. "What do you want to eat?" He eyes Min up and down. "You look like you need carbs. Noodles? Pasta?"

Oh. He _is_ hungry. Min hadn't realised. His mouth waters just thinking about it. Carbs... it's not Korean, but he doesn't think hyung is that nationalistic. "Carbonara? Please," Min says.

"It's on the menu. 'With real cream'," Hyun quotes, nodding. "Extra bacon. Sounds good."

Min waits until he's ordered and hung up to ask. "What is your opinion?"

Hyun narrows his eyes at him with that studious focus that looks like it should have something to do with sex but in practice means he's coming to a conclusion. "Did you consent?"

He doesn't understand. He understands the figurative definition as applied to criminal sexual offenses, but he doesn't understand the point of the question. "I let him," Min says, wary of his intensity.

"Did you consent?" Hyun asks again, with the same flat, serious tone.

"I let him," Min repeats. "It helped. I have tension problems."

Hyun puts his hands in his pockets. "Like you would have let me?"

Min doesn't know what to say. He contemplates what would have happened if he refused Joon-young and he doesn't know. There's nothing that occurs to him. He hasn't thought about it. They had time and Min wanted the familiarity and it was fine. It hurt, but Min knew it would hurt. Those places hurt to touch so of course it would hurt when Joon-young helped him with them. "I wouldn't allow it now," he says.

"You don't know what my problem is, do you?" Hyun asks.

The only thing stopping Min from pulling his clothes back on and leaving is the fact that Hyun doesn't sound like he pities him. He sounds curious the way Joon-young is curious. Like Min is interesting. "Right. I don't."

Hyung chuckles. "You've done well," he says, "for that level of sociopathy." He tilts his head. "Or abuse. One or the other, I haven't decided yet. But you seem to function well. It must be difficult."

He's even more confused now. Is hyung … understanding him?

"Anyway," Hyun says, "shall we put some ointment on all that? It's going to show through your suit if you don't do anything about it."

Min stares at him, bewildered. He doesn't actually have a model for hyung behaving like this, and he's not sure of the appropriate response. Or the inappropriate response. "That's fine," he says in the end, deciding that hyung touching him again will always be worth it.

The ointment is greasy and thick and it feels very good, soothing and cooling. Hyun lays down towels on the heated bathroom floor for Min and treats his back and shoulders while Min does his legs. His fingers are broad and gentle and he doesn't rub in the cream so much as stroke it in, and it's comforting to know there is something about Hyun that is still hyung.

"Your non-exclusive knows their anatomy," Hyun says. "This is every myofascial trigger point I ever learned about." He sounds impressed. "What was the argument?" He makes a considering noise behind Min. "He was jealous, right?"

If Min cranes his neck he could probably see Hyun's face in the mirror, but he decides not to try. He still hurts. "It wasn't an argument," he says. Joon-young doesn't have arguments.

Hyun's hands pause on his back.

Min shifts his shoulders, leaning cautiously into his palms. "You stopped."

"This is a rare occurrence," Hyun says, but it's like he's not sure. "This. The trigger points. This is rare. Right?"

"It is," Min says.

"Right," Hyun says again, and his hands rub slowly down his spine, and he uses all of his fingers and strokes him like he's seen people pet cats. "How's this?"

Min hums at the warmth building under his skin, the ease of his strange, unbalanced aches. "Better."

"Is there a risk," Hyun says after a long, pleasurable while of touching Min, so pleasurable that Min eventually curls up on the towels and puts his head on his knee like a dog and loses himself in basking, "that this will escalate?"

Min meets his eyes. Both hyung and Joon-young have a habit of hiding their real questions inside other ones. "I am here because I think it's worth it. This," he says, "is worth it to me."

Hyun swallows. It looks like it hurts him. But he doesn't say anything, and his thigh is warm against Min's cheek and chest, his forearms strong and his jaw sharp. Min thinks about stretching up and kissing him. Thinks about looking at him like this for a long, long time. Thinks about painting him like this, how they might look if someone took a photo of them, the angles of their bodies together and Min draped on him, covered in white blotches and Hyun's hair frazzled upright.

Min thinks about kissing him.

They're interrupted by the doorbell. "Room service?"

"Eat first," Hyun says, and helps Min to his feet. It's not necessary -- he can stand up by himself, he's been doing it since he was two -- but he likes the way hyung braces him against his body and takes care to put a hand under his elbow and around his waist. It's practical and intimate and again something Min's only seen in dramas. It feels like being cradled. It feels like hyung.

Min puts on one of the bathrobes to eat, Hyun across from him with a dessert he says he only ever orders in hotels but appears to enjoy.

His carbonara is delicious and perfect and so rich and heavy Min wants to fall asleep before he's even halfway through. Fortunately hyung thought ahead and called for coffee too, the dark strong sort Joon-young can't stand, and Min alternates bites and sips.

"How about we nap for a while," Hyun says, "and see how you feel."

Going to bed with hyung is wonderful, and Min dares to nestle in his arms and tell him again. He wants hyung to know. He wants hyung to be sure of him, the way Min is sure that he is hyung. "It's worth it."

"It's not that I don't believe you," Hyun says.

Min huffs theatrically, draws it out long and slow. "Let me handle him."

Hyung strokes through his hair and Min sighs without meaning to. "It's also not that I doubt you. I don't. But I really don't know when I'm coming back and I didn't expect to feel this way."

"I'll be fine." Min kisses him. "I am the sort of person who is always busy and always fine."

Hyun _tastes_ skeptical when Min kisses him again.

"You taste like skepticism," Min murmurs.

"What? How? That makes no sense at all."

"You just do."

***

Min drifts awake and looks around. It's dim, with only one light on over by the couches, and just enough filters over that he can see the outline of Hyun's body, Hyun's face, an impression of shadows and depth.

His eyes adjust and he finds that he is looking at Hyun and Hyun is looking back. Hyung doesn't seem like he's been asleep.

"Am I that interesting?" Min asks.

Hyun sighs. "I was thinking about Min."

"Again?" He doesn't believe that Hyun thinks about him so much. Why would he think about him so much and not look for him? Why would he think about him so often and wonder and _not look_ for the answers to his questions? For Min?

"Yeah. Things such as, how he might have turned out with Lee Joon-young as his guardian. What he might look like now. He might have dyed his hair or pierced his ears. He might be a cellist. He might be a salaryman. He might be dead. He might be a murderer like Lee Joon-young. He might be homeless, or living in a share room with five roommates and one bathroom." Hyun smiles, his teeth bright in the dim. "He might have married a rich woman and moved into a mansion with five bathrooms."

"Why are you telling me this?" Min says. He tries to sound like he's complaining, but it's half-hearted. He likes it when hyung doesn't forget about him even if the hypocrisy sets up a drumbeat of _I hate you, I hate you, I hate you_ thudding in his ears.

"I want him to be safe and happy," Hyun says. "That's all I want. When you see him, tell him that."

Min pauses, distracted from resentment. "I don't have any contact with him."

"You're lying," Hyun says. "You don't add up, Jung Sun-ho. I checked the records. Lee Joon-ho is your legal guardian and his records are as good as yours. But if your uncle is not Lee Joon-young, then who of the people you know is Lee Joon-young?" Hyun grips Min's shoulder. "And you do know him. That is the only explanation that makes sense for everything. These are not coincidences, they are patterns, and if you know him, you know Min." His grip tightens. "Where is he? Did he tell you to approach me?"

Min feels panic bubble and flood and come out of his mouth as laughter. "That's an entertaining line of inquiry. Implausible, but entertaining." He laughs again and shifts his shoulder. "Is this also not an argument?"

Hyun's hand falls away, slipping like all the strength has gone out of his fingers, and for a moment Min wonders if he's too much, if he's said too much, if Hyun is going to throw him out.

"One of them did that to you," Hyun says quietly, dragging out his syllables like the words taste horrible. "Because of me. Didn't they? One of them is your non-exclusive. Right?"

"Speculate as you like," Min says. He hates him. How he hates him. "I know nothing about it. I just wanted to fuck you. You were gorgeous and rejecting everyone. I wanted to be the one you chose."

"Did Min do this to you?" Hyun demands.

This at least he can answer in a way Hyun will like. "No."

"Is Min your --"

"No," Min cuts in. "He's not." _I'm not my exclusive, I'm not my anything_ , he doesn't say. "I knew who you were when I saw you. But … I wanted you for me. I want you for me. You're a secret. Can you understand?"

Hyun breathes in. "That is a very dangerous game to play with someone like him."

"As you said, it's not your business."

"I don't want any more people dead because of me."

Min holds back the urge to ask _then why did you shoot him_. There's no point in that. Either Hyun pretends not to remember or he really doesn't remember or both. Their father had a problem with hyacinths; their garden in the new house had hyacinths until one weekend their father took shears and a shovel and dug them up until he cried and Hyun had to take over. Min helped to fill in the hole with something else -- rhododendrons? Something like that -- and they never had hyacinths in the house again. They were mother's favourite.

"I won't die," Min says, smiling and certain. Joon-young will never let anyone kill him, will he? Min needs him and Joon-young needs him too. Joon-young, he of the photo albums and toys from saved childhoods, would never do that to the two of them.

Joon-young needs him.

"Find that person," Min continues. "The one that remembers Lee Min. Prove that you care and I'll see what I can do."

Hyun sighs. "He doesn't want to see me. Right? If it were me, and I thought someone abandoned me to someone like Joon-young, I wouldn't want to see me."

Min sighs too. These are hard questions with answers he still hasn't figured out for himself, and he has to avoid implicating Joon-young's Joon-ho identity any more than he already has. "It's complicated. You're still hyung. To him."

"Let's keep in touch," Hyun says. "While I'm gone. You're not …" He grunts. "You're not _not_ -precious to me. I will worry. So, let's keep contact."

"I like you too," Min says. "Is that what you mean?"

Hyun kisses him. "Yes. I like you. And one day I am going to figure you out."

"And then you'll never speak to me again," Min says with absolute certainty. "You'll hate me. You won't want to see me."

Hyun laughs, low in the dark. "Is that what you need this time? I won't do that. I promise I won't do that. I won't hate you and I definitely won't stop speaking to you."

"Promise?" Min asks, desperate.

"Yeah. It's very unlikely your connection to me or Min is worse than Lee Joon-young's and I still have questions for him. You have nothing to worry about. So, it's a promise."

 _Oh, but I am so much worse_ , Min doesn't say. _Joon-young wouldn't lie to you like this._

"You'll need to prove it," Min says for lack of words.

Hyung kisses him again. "That's fine."

He sounds so confident it makes Min shiver. He wants to be sure of hyung. He wants to be. He can't, can't ever again, but he thirsts for the chance. Perhaps this is it?

"I'll prove it to you. Both of you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I generally conceptualise Joon-young in this fic (and the show) as being a nightmare of a gaslighter to live with and Min having nearly 0 defenses against Joon-young's view of him and the world around them to the point where it nearly doesn't matter what inborn conflicts he did or did not have, his sense/understanding of reality is being overwritten all. the. time. 
> 
> That kind of thing just never plays out prettily and I think Hyun has enough contact with criminal dyads to see that Min is part of one fuck of a dangerous mess.
> 
> But will Hyun give up on Sun-ho or Min? I don't think so. :D


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi fellow I Remember You/Hello Monster fans! It's been well over a year since I last updated this. If anyone's still reading (shoutouts to the people who recently left comments and got me going again!), here's a new chapter and I've a few more lined up too that are still being tweaked. 
> 
> This chapter is probably a touch awkward since it's been so long. Let me know what you think!

At the end of their overlapping holidays he spends Christmas with Joon-young as usual, but it feels different, less a day of getting through another year together and more about things unsaid.

 _Merry Christmas_ , hyung texts him on the day, accompanies it with a photo from Times Square featuring a crowd of fuzzy hats and a tree so oversized it can't help but be appalling. Min replies with a photo of the tree Joon-young brought to Min's studio, tiny and fake and piled at the base with trinkets from the albatrosses, most of them in still in postmarked envelopes.

The time to the new year is whiled away at the main table of Min's studio, Joon-young occupied with his studies and bodies and Min telecommuting to cover gaps in the pre-Christmas days of people getting drunk and fighting with their families and having arguments over inheritances, processing cases of his own and writing up notes for the paralegals and generally brownnosing to get off probation early.

It seems to be working.

The alternative occupation would be to paint, but Min doesn't trust himself to paint the same as he used to. Even his drawings are different; these days they are hyacinths and three-faced triadic men, flower studies and memories of the years with Joon-young, and Joon-young would definitely notice the shift. He suspects this might be the beginning of a very long goodbye but he tries not to think about it. The thought itself feels frightening and wrong and fundamentally incorrect. It must be incorrect.

"How do you like your position?" Joon-young asks over several textbooks spread in front of him, his favourite spiral-bound notebooks open under his hand. "As a defender."

Min shrugs and deletes emails, his laptop rocking under the force. "I don't mind. I like doing well." He pretends sociability. "How do you like yours?"

Joon-young nods like asking him was a pretext for the reciprocal question. "I think it will be good to become head examiner next year. More opportunity, larger salary, and of course a head examiner is more likely to be called to scenes by detectives and present findings. Perhaps I will meet your brother professionally? I think that will be interesting."

"He's in America," Min says. "To teach."

Joon-young nods, sharpening a pale blue pencil and starting to shade a diagram. "Teaching doesn't suit his personality. I wonder how good he really is?"

"Isn't that tone too close?" Min points out.

"Ah, yes." Joon-young browses the pencils and selects another, holding it up for consideration. Min nods approval. "This one then."

Min grew up with sheaves of Joon-young's notes lying around in bright piles of neon highlighters and shaded pencils and chromatic-primary-coloured pens, and seeing them everywhere again, clear and time-consumingly pretty, is so very familiar. Min supposes there must have been a drama featuring a teenage girl with good study habits at some point during his childhood; one day Joon-young said he didn't know how to help Min with school, then another day Joon-young came home with a stack of stolen leaky pens and used schoolbooks still smelling like a bin of unrinsed recycling, and that was that.

They revised similarly in university and Min was both told he was too girlish and plagued with attempts to trade for copies while Joon-young was told his daughter must love him very much. It's another thing they learned together, he and Joon-young, though Min is much less prone to shades in his notes. He prefers to draw a box, highlight according to his colour code, and be done with it.

It reflects their taste in art. They holidayed in America once and Min stared at the contemporary art for hours while Joon-young stared at the Dutch masters in another wing, vivid and full of the ground-up dead.

How does hyung take notes? What do his notes look like? Does he bother with colour-coding at all? Boxes? Circles? Underlines? What is the look of Hyun's mind on paper?

Min wishes he could know. He wishes he could remember if Hyun ever had to take notes at all.

"How far are you?" Min asks. He's restless. It's snowing outside and though he's with Joon-young he's also lonely. He wants to know how hyung is doing. He wants to see him, hear him, but he can't while Joon-young is in his house. He wants sex. He wants to paint. He wants all sorts of things. He wants things he can't have. He wants to check Hyun's texts without Joon-young getting suspicious.

Joon-young doesn't look up. "I have a quarter-chapter left. Occupy yourself."

Min bares his teeth and takes out his phone, angling the screen away from Joon-young and forcing himself not to actively count the turn of his pages, He estimates some thirty or so licks of Joon-young's thumb before Joon-young puts down his pen and flexes his hand.

Hyung still hasn't answered. For someone so prompt with email Hyun is abominably lazy at everything else.

"Who is that?"

"Ah, the visiting attorney." Min locks his phone and smiles, putting it face down on the table. "I gave him my number. He says he might come back to Korea soon."

Joon-young smiles back. "What would you like?"

"What I always want, uncle." Min looks at him. They are both smiling, still.

Joon-young shakes his head. "You are very young," he says. "Some of us are not so young as you."

"I hadn't noticed," Min says. "Are you saying you're too old?"

"I am a little spry," Joon-young says. He's fibbing. Joon-young is as healthy as he was when he was nineteen if not more and they both know it. "Ah, it's a national holiday. Shall we celebrate?" He nods at Min and doesn't wait for him to answer. "Of course we shall."

Min's smile widens. He does enjoy Joon-young's favour. He has so very much of it given him.

***

"What did you do together?" Joon-young asks once they're washed and in bed and materials are stacked on the nightstand, his hand stroking the bare inside of Min's thigh. A celebration always means they start in bed. "You and that visiting attorney."

His first impulse is resentment. He doesn't want to talk about hyung in bed with Joon-young. It feels like violating something hyung gave him to keep. He wants hyung for himself.

But he can't alert Joon-young to that visiting attorney, that flippant lie, being anything Min might care about. He can't. That way lies all sorts of things Min doesn't want to think about. Like Joon-young taking hyung away. Hyung choosing Joon-young instead.

"We fucked each other," Min says baldly. "A lot." Petty, probably, but while Joon-young does all sorts of things to him he's never let Min do something like fuck him or touch his anus or put in his fingers. Even drunk the most Joon-young allows is Min watching him control a dildo. Hyun gave him more input and more put into his ass in the first hour they met again than Joon-young ever has.

Min liked topping Hyun. He liked it.

But it won't ever happen with Joon-young. He's explained it himself. The control he keeps over sex is a product of past conditioning that it is not necessary or worthwhile at this point to alter. It is all very logical. And pathetic.

"Did you penetrate him?" Joon-young asks. "Did he enjoy it?"

"Yes," Min says. "It was … different. He rode me." He thinks of hyung's thighs, his knees pressing into the mattress, his hands scrabbling at Min's chest, how his mouth opened when Min gripped his waist and thrust upward as fast as he could, and he starts to harden, his cheeks flushing. "He rode me. He came on me and licked it off."

Joon-young puts on a glove and eases his hand between Min's legs, putting in two fingers. Min squeezes automatically, his breath hitching. "You liked that?"

"Yes," Min answers, spreading his thighs in urgency and willingness. Joon-young's fingers are so long and he knows Min's body so very well. "I liked it. His tongue felt good."

"Like this?" Joon-young licks a stripe on his neck and for a moment Min is too taken with the memory of hyung to answer. "You should tell me. It's interesting."

"Like that," Min answers, reaching up to grip the headboard. He shouldn't touch Joon-young when they are like this. Joon-young doesn't like it. But he wants to grab onto something, wants to squeeze it the way he remembers squeezing Hyun's ass, Hyun's thighs and arms. He remembers hyung leaning into his touch and feeling all of his pieces line up in the need to take hyung's want and leave him replete.

"Where?" he asks, fingers curling inside Min. "Where did he come on you?"

Min deflects when Joon-young eases off and gives Min enough breath to speak. "Why do you want to know about what I did with him?"

Joon-young hums. "I have heard sharing such things is a good way to strengthen a relationship." His fingers press upward, hard, and Min grimaces and gasps, obliging the way Joon-young is watching him, trying not to arch away. "I think it would be good to tell me."

"Here," Min manages, and touches his stomach, his belly. "Here. He came on here."

"Ah," Joon-young says, and bends down to kiss where Min touched, tongue lapping, and Min feels something strange and coiling that he doesn't understand, wants to shrink from, and he sucks in his stomach. "I did shower."

"I know you did," Joon-young says, and he rolls a condom down onto Min's cock. "But the principle stands, doesn't it? Cleaning your partner?"

Min doesn't know what to say. Is there something metaphorical to clean off him? Something Joon-young thinks Min should be ashamed of? But it was hyung. How could Min be ashamed of hyung touching him again? It's hyung. "It wasn't like that."

"You still underestimate my regard for you," Joon-young says, and licks the side of Min's cock. "Did he do this too?"

"Yes," Min says, the skin on his throat and chest growing warm. He imagines hyung's mouth, remembers the first time they woke up together and hyung sucked his cock, and bites his lip on a moan. "Yes."

"Did you like it?"

"I did. He was good at it," Min says, and the words are dragged out of him. He doesn't want to talk about it, and he looks away as though that might possibly help. Joon-young sees everything, feels everything anyway, but it's easier to breathe. "I liked it."

"More than this?" Joon-young's fingers shift inside him, draw out and return with a fourth finger adding to the spread inside him, knuckles pushing hard and broad, the rush of it stealing Min's breath.

And still -- still. It was hyung. Hyung's mouth. Hyung's touch. Yes. Yes, he liked it more than this. He wishes this was hyung's hand, and he feels traitorous and ungrateful. Joon-young is a better person, isn't he? Min should be more grateful than this. Shouldn't he? He should at least bother to mimic gratitude. Joon-young's been clear enough on that score.

Min moans and lies. "No. Not more than this." He can feel the unusual thickness of the lube Joon-young's using. Does he intend to put his hand in him again? Probably. He wonders what if it was hyung's hand, what if hyung knelt between his legs and put his hand in him to the wrist and smiled at him, and squirms his legs around Joon-young's shoulders, feeling restless and itchy in his skin.

He clutches the headboard with both hands when Joon-young starts sucking his cock and fucking him with the four fingers and the tip of his thumb too, spreading his legs as wide as he can and tipping his hips to ease the strain. It only helps somewhat, and the drizzle of cold lube onto his skin makes him jump. Joon-young holds up his gloved hand and lets Min watch him lube it to the wrist until it glistens and clumps sag down his fingers.

"Shh," Joon-young tells him, expression focused and his free hand pressing hard on Min's belly, and Min tries to steady his breathing.

There's enough lube for it to go easily but he's not quite stretched enough, and Min makes a high-pitched noise when Joon-young's thumb settles against him from base to tip, the rest of his hand inside. He tries not to writhe; it only makes it worse, makes both the pleasure and the ache worse, and it feels both incredibly good and not at all what he wants. Who he wants. "I do have to walk tomorrow." He arches. It doesn't help. It never does help. "I have _work_."

"Don't be dramatic. Did he do this to you?" Joon-young asks, infuriatingly calm.

Min sucks in air. "No."

"Do you think he would? If you would ask for such a thing."

He knows what Joon-young wants from him, and he manages a laugh, though it strains him around Joon-young's hand and makes it feel too large and strange. "I wouldn't ask," Min says. "You're the only one."

Joon-young smiles. "Then, because it is a holiday and we have time, should we see what can be done with this?"

Min comes three times. The second time Joon-young has to gag him to stop his begging and the third he has to tie him down to stop him from struggling away, his orgasm painfully dry and lube drippings smeared all up his back. Joon-young has to roll him off the mat and help him stand and walk. It's all Min can do to loll his head away from the shower.

"Do you think you'll see him again?" Joon-young asks. His voice is very soothing. "Your attorney. You know I don't mind if you experiment. Variety is healthy in some cultures."

"I don't know," and Min finds himself sobbing. "I don't know."

"Shh." Joon-young hums and strokes his hair and for a moment Min wishes for hyung so desperately the ache is even worse than the one inside him.

***

Min goes back to work and proper long hours after break. Hyun's emails are mostly in English, unlike his texts. Min supposes his office computer isn't equipped.

 _New York is still New York. Every time I'm away I forget how badly it smells. It's like Seoul and smog_.

_The bars are also friendlier and easier to find. I didn't pick up anyone, however. I was thinking about you the whole time. Is that too intimate? Let me know._

Min has trouble hiding his smile when he reads it at lunch, standing on a balcony with a cup of coffee and a generic bowl of noodles. It's still cold outside but the best place for privacy that won't make the supervisors think he's snuck out to gamble or drink or whatever it is irresponsible people do.

Hyung is thinking about him, even in America. It's a good thought.

 _Not too intimate_ , Min texts him in Korean from his personal number. He's always been told never to mix up personal business with work. Joon-young always told him how many of his kills gave themselves away to him with such carelessness. Hyung never got the same speeches, apparently. He wonders if it's a function of their jobs or just a gap in common sense. _It's good to hear from you._ _The air quality is not so bad today._

He considers it, then adds: _I think about you too._

The selca is windy and awful, with Min's eyebrows accidentally raised and a corner of his mouth a funny shape and the noodles awkward in his hand, but there's something about the picture Min likes enough to send.

Hyung replies too fast for someone supposedly on American time, and Min juggles his coffee to his other hand and checks. _You're gorgeous._

Min feels his face go hot and his mouth smile without permission and he hugs the phone close to him like he can absorb the words into his body if he just holds it against his heart long enough. Hyung thinks he's gorgeous, of all words he could've possibly chosen and he chose that one. Gorgeous.

He takes a picture of the smile-without-permission and sends it before he can think better of it, adding _have some more then._

 _You're good to me. Where are you?_ , hyung replies a few seconds later, and happiness bubbles in Min's chest, unfamiliar and strange. He can be good to hyung! Hyun says so! It's so terribly easy, isn't it, to be good to him, to earn that reaction, but Min likes it. Min likes it very much.

 _At work. I am going inside now_ , Min writes. _It is cold. You should go home and sleep._

***

Min comes off probation at the beginning of June and texts hyung before bed his own time to let him know. After thinking about hyung for so long the time zone conversions are easily done. New York is UTC -5:00, so midnight in UTC+9:00 converts to eleven in the morning for hyung. Min would have texted at his own lunchtime, but he's discovered Hyun becomes less inclined to say nice things about Min's selcas when they wake him up.

Hyung calls him then and there and Min answers, how could he ever not answer hyung, but the warmth of his voice and the smile he can hear still surprises him. "That's great news," Hyun says. He sounds awake, caffeinated and well-fed, his tones smooth. He hasn't had dairy for breakfast then. "You said five months, right? It's been that long?"

"It has," Min says. "But time passes quickly when you are busy."

"True," Hyun says. He sounds like something is funny, but not Min. Himself? "I was appointed full professor this semester. It's different from being adjunct faculty. More responsibility but... there are benefits. Healthcare. Also, holidays." He keeps talking before Min can wet his dry lips enough to speak. "I was thinking of coming back for a few weeks this autumn. Actually, soon. What do you think?"

What does he think? Many things. He thinks many, many things. He thinks he would strip and fuck a letterbox if it would make it possible to see Hyun sooner. "Won't that be expensive?"

"I have a house. It's my father's house. I could air it out."

He's about to laugh, about to say something playful and inane from Joon-young's dramas, when he remembers: Joon-young.

Something Joon-young said years ago.

_Did you know the lawns are still green?_

It's a fist inside him, and he presses an answering fist to his belly. Uncertainty makes him sick. He can't let -- but it's something Min can't control, is it, hyung is curious and Joon-young will be -- he will have hyung, and he won't be Min's anymore. He won't be his anymore.

Joon-young will be good to hyung. So good. He knows how smooth it will sound when he tells Min all about it. The tea he will serve at Min's own table. The reflection off the kitchen shelves will be a prickle in Min's eyes. _I met your hyung today,_ he would say, and Min wouldn't be important anymore.

"Aren't houses a bit too much like dating? It seems against the creed of port girls," Min says. He means it to be funny and questioning. He means to distract Hyun. It comes out like he's four years old again and Hyun is in their father's study spending all his time caring about their ugly, useless father and his ugly, useless papers and his ugly, useless everything and all Min could do back then was spill things or spoil the milk or untie his shoelaces.

Now he can do much more than that. So much more.

Hyun still isn't speaking, and Min's breath hitches. He didn't mean to be ungrateful. He didn't mean to.

"I don't see you often," Hyun says. He's too serious, and Min listens, unwilling. "That's not the same as taking you lightly. Is there a problem?"

Min swallows. The idea of speaking feels hard, knotted like rope tangled and left to dry. He forces his lips to unstick. Perhaps the truth, shaped into a small piece, can let him get away without excuses. He doesn't like that he can lie to hyung. "I'm not comfortable. I find the hotels comfortable."

"There are some things I really don't miss about Korea," Hyun says. "I understand. Well, I will pay for a room when we see each other. Otherwise my house will be cheaper for me."

 _Don't do it,_ Min wants to beg. _Don't do it, don't, please don't, he'll take you away, please, please_. He wishes it were only the prospect of the neighbours seeing. But there are neighbours and then there is Joon-young.

"Thank you," he says. A sharpness crawls through his throat. "Even though it is your own house, please be careful."

"You're mistaking me for a social, empathetic person," Hyun says like he thinks Min should know better.

Min does know better. But Hyun needs to listen to him and Min doesn't know how to make him without giving everything away. Without giving hyung to Joon-young without a fight. "You're underestimating the lure of a handsome man who's single."

Hyun is smiling, he can tell. It sets Min's teeth. "So if I were to move back and air out my house, a single, handsome man, and if you were also a single, handsome man?"

"You would have to buy a lot of curtains," Min snaps.

"Why is that?"

He considers his surroundings. One person is glaring at him, but that's Chun-seok being Chun-seok and needing a favour. For someone so huffy about granting favours he's very easy with asking for them.

"I would fuck you on every surface," Min says, once he's turned away enough to be sure it's safe, moving his lips as little as he can, and as he speaks he feels that thrum of hatred meld into lust, an easy thing like the rhythm of Hyung's cock inside him after Min's already come, and he thinks about it, about treating Hyun like that.

Turning him around and lifting his thigh and fucking him forward until his hips thump against wood and burst into bruises. Thinks about whispering how much he hates him into his ear. Thinks about hyung letting him. How it feels to bite the thick nape of his neck.

He wishes hyung weren't a world away. "Every table. Every chair. Every wall. Even the kitchen sink. Everyone would see me holding you down and fucking you if you didn't."

The noise hyung makes curls pleasure all through his muscles, right down to a thrum in his fingertips. It feels good to surprise him, to arouse him. It feels so, so good to be someone hyung finds sexy enough to like it when Min says these things. He's often not brave enough. There's a confidence hyung has in these matters that Min still doesn't know how to match. His only experience used to be Joon-young, and now it is Joon-young and Hyun. Not very broad.

"I look forward to my holidays," is all Hyun says, deep and curling like Min's sucking his cock instead of just talking dirty, and Min expects the hair-raising pleasure of being an influence to be the end of it.

A few minutes later, long enough that he's back at his desk, Min checks his phone under the keyboard tray as he logs into his assigned desktop with the other hand. _I would be ready for my handsome neighbour._

The thought of losing him is wretched and dizzying and impossible and Min doesn't know what to do.

***

Hyung texts him the itinerary itself right from the ticketing website in a stupid display of trust and Min feels himself wind tighter and tighter as the year accelerates in stacks of cases and Chun-seok pestering him and hyung's texts. Whispers of connections, of acclaim, of respect, drift to his ears and hum between drinks of soju with seniors and tea with Prosecutor Shin.

Min drinks in every one of them, claims them as his own and his right. Soon he will be promoted to his own office, his own latitude. Perhaps his own secretary. It is only what Jung Sun-ho deserves.

Paradoxically he relaxes more than he ever has when Joon-young touches him. Letting Joon-young fuck him is easy. Wanting his cock is easy. Wanting him is easier when by the end of the year he might not have him to himself anymore. Or have him at all.

Joon-young's in a strange mood after his own promotion to head examiner, exploratory and contemplative, the sort of mood that always comes up when things change faster than he'd like, and Min isn't fond of how Joon-young's adjustments also adjust how they have sex, the way Joon-young whispers _Min_ and _mine_ and fucks him with his arm pinned against his back, but he knows better than to hinder him when he is like this.

"Min," Joon-young says, his gloved fingers rubbing between Min's cheeks, soothing around the spread of the dildo inside him. "did you know your brother is coming back to Korea?"

He turns his head, unsurprised by the stretch of Joon-young's fingers pushing in alongside. "Yes. A tour for his book."

"I would like to see him. He's grown up very well." Joon-young climbs on top of him, latex slipping against his thigh, and Min closes his eyes at the stretch of his cock against, against, until his knee is wedded to Min's with sticky sweat and there are two cocks inside him, one false and one Joon-young's. "I wonder," Joon-young says, "if you would like him to be the other. Have you thought of it?"

"I don't think about him like that," Min lies. But he'd been focused on Joon-young for once, and he feels his throat parch just contemplating the edges of having them both. How it would feel not to lose them after all. To be worth something. If they would keep him. How horrid it would be every time they focused on each other instead.

Would Joon-young keep him after all, keep him the way he holds Min's hip and stays inside him? Would they? Or would their eyes meet over his head and Min become a worthless bridge?

"I did wonder, seeing you at luncheon at the conference last year. You did look very close." It's very light.

"Don't pretend," Min says, sullen at this talk of hyung, the rise of that raw, indivisible panic he feels whenever he thinks of them meeting in such a place, in that house, Min's real home, the place where hyung belongs, "you wouldn't rather it was him. You think he's attractive."

Joon-young clicks his tongue. "You shouldn't be disingenuous. You know I am very focused on you at the moment."

"If that's true you should talk about me instead," Min grumbles.

"Ah. Yes, I should." Joon-young makes a contemplative noise, shifting, and it makes the dildo move too. Min holds in a squeak but can't stop the shudder of that counterweight, how slick it is, how broad the metal. Joon-young's cock is comparatively forgiving and the mix of sensations settles easily once they're still, lets his stomach calm, but when Joon-young moves it's like all the water in his body floods his mouth and his pulse centers around him and that strange, awful, delicious interchange.

"This one is too long," Joon-young says after some jarring, experimental thrusts. "You should turn around."

Min isn't sure he can, but he does anyhow, struggling to pivot around the heavy dildo. It threatens to drop out of him when he falls onto his back and Joon-young puts it back in place, puts an arm around his thigh, and puts his cock back inside too.

It's better like this, still strange but mostly weight, a deep appreciation of the frictionless surface of stainless steel. It's warm inside him now, warm as Joon-young's cock, and Min bends up his knees with a faint little noise he thinks he last made when he was six, drooling.

Joon-young keeps prodding at the gaps, putting in what feels like a thumb. Min chokes. "That's too much, uncle."

"No, I don't think so." He takes out the dildo and turns it around, and now it's its turn to be worked in alongside, broad and so bulbous he feels lube trickle, squished out of him by the breadth of it and Joon-young's unsteadiness and the recoil, so like nausea, that starts in Min's heels and works its way up to his scalp.

"I don't want anyone else," Min lies. "I don't, uncle. Take it out." His skin is too hot, his body stretched too wide, and this is all so physical and close and nothing like who he wants.

Joon-young relents and removes it, a heavy thump on the mat. Fucking feels new with it lying too-hot against the underside of his thigh, stretched and easy, luxuriantly so, and he reaches along his back, lifting his hip, and puts two fingers in to fill some of that shivery gap between their struggle and their success.

They are together, he and Joon-young, always for as long as this lasts. They are together. Just them. It has to be this way. Surely Joon-young feels like that too.

"It's better this way, don't you think?" Min drops his head in a nod. "I hope we can spend some time together when your hyung is here," Joon-young says against his neck. "It's not good for you to be so distracted."

The warning skates down his spine and makes his lips curl back from his teeth. Min digs his fingernails into Joon-young's arm. "You too, uncle."

Joon-young shakes free and settles his hand across his eyes, the other wrapping around Min's cock. He kisses Min's ear, soft and kind. " _I_ am not taking up with visiting attorneys. Hush."

***

"Have you had phone sex?" hyung asks him one day. "I like it, but it's been a while."

"I haven't," Min says, and gets up from his studio, goes upstairs and closes his bedroom window as a precaution. He's been painting while hyung eats breakfast on speakerphone and complains about the poor quality of the day's crossword, but this is more interesting. "Do you want to?"

"If you're not busy."

"Busy?" Min echoes.

Joon-young's out in another province and Min's wrapped up leading his second major case. His supervisors say he's on track to work solo from now on, to be promoted to direct work with the task forces. High-profile cases. His probation is a vague smear by now, a youthful hijink that ended well. The act of a genius.

Min's still surprised at the things he can get away with when he has Chun-seok's excuses and access to Seung-hoon's expense accounts, but it meant he could call in a favour, go home early, and give Hyun a wake-up call. He likes his morning voice. How he sounds, all blurred and trusting like Min is a friend, like they're back in a hotel room and hyung has him nestled against his chest.

"It's eleven," Min says. "I'm not busy."

"Neither am I. There's grading I should be doing, but I think I can take a break. Where are you?"

"My place," Min says, and then he feels foolish. Phone sex surely should be sexier than that. More details, at least. "I mean, my bedroom. I'm in my bedroom. And you're at home."

"On my couch," Hyun confirms. "It has a good view." He hums. "Tell me what you're wearing."

"Just a painting shirt and jeans. I really haven't done this before. Should I take them off? I'll put you on speaker."

"Yeah. It's okay. Just tell me what you're doing."

Min puts the phone down and undresses beside it, feeling foolish. This can't possibly be arousing. He's read enough witness depositions to know it plays a large part in a lot of affairs, but he's never understood how it works. "I'm taking off my shirt. My jeans are gone now." He puts them aside. "Should I take off the rest?"

Hyun laughs. "This is too awkward. Right. Well, what's the rest? Your usual?"

"Just underwear," Min tells him.

"Take it off, then. I don't suppose you'd send a picture?"

" _No_." Min clears his throat. "I have to think of my professional reputation."

"Worth asking." Hyun makes comfortable noises, furniture creaking, leather upholstery squeaking. Like he's settling in for whatever Min will give him. It's a strange thought. "Do you masturbate?"

"Not often," Min admits. "I'm getting into bed now. And taking you off speaker."

"Good. Leave the covers off. I do sometimes. I think about you when I do."

Min can't help smiling even though the draft is giving him goosebumps. "Me?"

"Yes, you." Hyun sounds confident, like they're in bed, and Min doesn't usually touch his own body but he tries it now with hyung's voice in his ear, sounding like that. It still doesn't feel like anything. He's attracted to Joon-young's hands on him, Hyun's hands on him. Not his own.

It's a bit better when he pretends his palms are square like hyung's, the fingers short like his, but he's never been imaginative this way and he can't hold it for long. "What about you? What are you wearing?"

"Me? I'm wearing … well, I was wearing a tshirt and shorts. They're gone now, though. I'm a bit hard already." A cap snicks somewhere on his end. "So, I've wondered. What do you like better? Top or bottom?"

"My non-exclusive doesn't let me top," Min says.

Hyun makes a satisfied noise. "As I thought. If you had me there with you, how would you do it? Tell me precisely."

Min pulls a face. Only hyung. "This is too sudden. What should I say?"

"I think you have more experience than you're letting on. You didn't have any trouble talking me into an erection when you put your mind to it," Hyun says. "Remember? Surfaces and the kitchen sink?"

"I didn't mean -- I meant it, but I didn't mean to make you. I just told you what I wanted."

"That's what you should say." Hyun sounds patient. Fond. Fond of him. Min feels himself stretch out, his body relaxing at the sound of such approval. "Tell me what you want with me."

"It's not sexy to be desperate," Min informs him. There's a long pause, the kind of quiet that makes Min raise his eyebrows. "Are you desperate?" he asks, curious now.

Hyun sighs. "This is the sort of situation where other people would say, 'feed my ego'."

It makes him laugh. "I've never wanted anyone as much as I want you."

"Really? Even your nonexclusive?"

"Yes," Min says, very confident. "Even when I'm with him, I think about you."

There's another long quiet. Min pulls the covers up to his knees to stop his feet from freezing.

"I would ask why you are with him," Hyun says, "but it's not any of my business."

Min decides to tell a little of the truth. "He's looked after me for a long time. Part of it is probably habit. The other part ... I don't want to give him up. I know he'll keep his promises to me. Not a lot of people are like that."

"True enough," Hyun says. "Do I have to ask a third time? I will."

"No. Let me think." He settles into his sheets, considers what to say. How to say it. It was easier when he wasn't being purposeful. "The part I didn't tell you about the walls," unsure if this is the right approach either, "was that I was picturing fucking you up against them. Right up against so you'd have bruises on your hips afterwards. I was picturing that. And biting you. Not small bites. Big ones. I would press you into the wall and bite you."

Hyun moans. It's a little bit theatrical, but Min recognises enough of it to feel a twist of pleasure in his stomach. He knows how it sounds when hyung strokes his cock, the way he likes to lather the head and tighten his hand as he slides it off. That sound right now is real too. "I do like it when you bite me. What else? That can't be the only thing. It's not, right?"

"It's not. I ... the kitchen sink." He thinks of it. That sink, the knives beside it, the window and the rhododendrons beneath. In that house. "I would push your leg up over the counter and make you balance on your toes. You'd have to hold onto the window. You'd be so wide I could put anything in you. And I would tell you to beg me. And you would."

He reaches down to touch himself too, his cock thickening in his hand. He likes this. He didn't know, but he likes this.

"I would," Hyun says. "I usually don't, but for you I would." He laughs, but it dissolves into the sort of hum Min recognises from when hyung gets turned on enough to start spreading his legs and establishing who is going to fuck whom and how this time. "How many fingers should I put in?"

"You're going to?" he asks, surprised.

"Yes, and I'm pretending it's you. How many. Sun-ho, tell me how many."

"Two. Start with two." He listens eagerly and moans when the noise is abruptly louder. He can hear Hyun shifting, can hear the squelch. He can hear every little thing.

"You're on speaker," Hyun says, further away. "I thought --"

"Yes," Min interrupts. "Definitely. Do you have --" He doesn't know what hyung calls them, if he calls them anything. "Items? I'll want you to put in something bigger."

"I do," Hyun says. "Hang on."

Min waits impatiently, retrieving one of his own from the drawer. They were gifts from Joon-young, to use during the times they're apart for long periods for one reason or another, but he rarely gets to use them without Joon-young there. He likes the idea of having one inside him on his own, just like this. With hyung.

Touching himself is strange. He still doesn't like it. But he thinks of hyung and the noises his fingers made, and it's easier at least. Two fingers, and three come quickly, and then it hurts just a little bit to put it inside himself. The steel one Joon-young likes, but the narrow end. There's no give to it at all but there's no resistance either, and he tries not to hold his breath too much.

"I wish I could see you," Hyun says all of a sudden, and Min flushes to realise how distracted he got. "I wish -- you sound so -- I'm not asking for anything. You're fucking yourself, right?"

"Yes." Min feels daring. "I still won't take pictures. Nothing like that. But a live, if you want --"

Hyung swears in English, makes one of Min's favourite wheezy noises, and switches back to Korean. "Yes. What do I have to do?"

Min talks him through the process of installing and setting up, ignores his comments about data security, and eventually, finally, he puts on the video. It's choppy, a little pixelated, but Min moves the phone very slowly to aim it at his crotch, at the dildo resting on the mattress, the rest of it inside him.

"That looks huge," hyung says. He sounds like Min is strangling him. Min likes it. "Show me. Take it out and show me."

He pulls it out very slowly, holding the phone as steady as he can in his other hand. "I don't have a lot of favourite things, but this is one of them."

"I see that." Hyung sounds strangled, still, but also like Min is marvelous, and it makes him a little giddy. "Wow. Put it back in. Slowly again. Can you bring the phone closer?"

Min does, and he listens to the sounds hyung makes, listens to his deep, irregular breaths, listens for every scrap of wonder he can drag out of him with the thrust of the dildo inside himself, with the fingers he puts in around it, with the moans he deliberately makes a little too loud and a little too long.

Hyung gives it all so easily Min feels as though his entire self is overbalancing having all of this, all at once, just like that. Like he's gorging on his praise and eating himself sick. Eventually his arm aches too much and his head feels too full for it to be worth it anymore and he turns off the video altogether, dropping the phone to the pillow beside his head.

"That was sudden. Are you okay?"

"My arm started hurting." He feels drum-tight all of a sudden, the dildo too much, and he tugs it out and leaves it. Joon-young would hate that Min isn't bothering with a mat, but Min likes to irritate him in absentia. He rubs his stomach, torn between arousal and tension. "Was that fine?"

"More than," hyung says. "I'm not comfortable doing that in return," hyung says. "But I definitely appreciate that you did. Definitely. I'm a very visual person when it comes to these things."

They both are, and it strikes something in him Joon-young calls _inside Min_ , the welter of things Joon-young taught him over many years not to say where anyone else could hear him. "My non-exclusive," wanting to know what he thinks of it, what he'll do with knowing someone else has Min too, has him in ways he doesn't, "once fucked me with it while he was inside me. At the same time."

"I hope he looked after you," Hyun says, too serious and too soft and nothing like Min wanted him to react. Expected him to react.

"You don't like the idea?"

There's a deep breath. "I like the fantasy. But It would be hard not to hurt you by accident."

"He didn't. I liked it," Min says, enjoying the petty thrill of telling him about Joon-young without his knowledge. "I put in my fingers after that fell out. There was so much room around his cock. It felt good."

There's another of those strange, long silences again. Min waits.

"I'm having sex with you," Hyun says. "That's what I want. Not with him by proxy. I'm not interested in that."

Is that what he was doing? He supposes so. Would he feel the same if he knew it was Lee Joon-young he was fucking by proxy? "I wanted to know what you thought."

"You do now. This isn't sexy for me. Let's get back to it."

Min finds it hard to focus again now that he's thinking about Joon-young, Joon-young and hyung and if hyung would lose interest in him and go to Joon-young, no proxy at all, if he knew. "What's sexy for you?" he asks.

"You could tell me what to do," Hyun says. "What to do to myself."

Min feels himself flush, can feel it rising on his chest. "I don't know how to start."

"I do," hyung says, and the idea of Hyun following through instead of just lying like a sensible person is intriguing enough to distract him back into touching his cock, into giving hyung all his attention again.

It's fun to imagine he's directing how he touches himself, how fast or slow, fun to give commands and hear him groan at them like Min's personally tormenting him. Min did torment him a little bit. But Hyun said he liked it, puffed and panted enough that Min had to switch to headphones, and Min wants to think hyung wasn't pretending to obey him. That he did touch himself on Min's say-so.

The power of it makes him wonder. "I like telling you to do things but it's not so fun over the phone where I can't see you. Can we do it next time?"

Hyun's still gasping. It's probably not an act. "As expected, you have a power-hungry personality and trust issues."

Min curls his toes, feeling very smug. He knows exactly what to say. "I am an attorney. Good luck grading."

"Good night, Sun-ho." Hyun sounds sleepy and pleased. Min did that. Min put that in his voice, or he puts it there for Min, and either way it's because of him. "You did well. I'll see you soon."

***

It takes another hour for Min to talk himself out of running to Joon-young, curled naked beneath the covers and clutching his shins, digging in his fingernails until his shoulders shake.

If it means keeping things like hyung smiling a world away, hyung calling him gorgeous, hyung liking him, hyung saying _you did well_ , maybe hyung doesn't have to know who Min is.

Maybe Min doesn't have to tell him.

It sets off a cascade of crackling hate, that idea, makes him coil, makes him shudder, makes him long for feeling something else, bigger than him. Something whole in all the ways he isn't. Big and sure and defined like endings, like being abandoned, like their mother's killer dying at his feet. Like the way he hates Hyun.

He's never thought about not telling him before. It always felt inevitable. Everything leading to the reveal. Hyung discovering he's been fucking the brother he gave away. His mouth still waters thinking of it.

But it's still possible not to. He could keep his mouth shut. He could just keep being Sun-ho. Even if it's not as Min, it's still hyung and Jung Sun-ho and it's something. Hyung letting him think he was directing him, whether he was or wasn't really, is something too. 

Hyung wanting to fuck Min, specifically, and no-one else. Not even in connection or description. Just Min. That too.

Min knows better than to think three singular things can be enough but for the first time he knows what it's like to wish they could be after all. Hyung's lust. Hyun's approval. Hyun's exclusive attention. If they're all true. What it would be like if they were enough.


	13. Chapter 13

Min calls hyung once he escapes traffic. "Did you finish grading?"

"Almost all of it. Are you off work now?"

"Yes," he tells him. "Driving home."

He listens to the rustle of papers, the way hyung sighs and stretches, his chair creaking. The click of his pen and the faint rattle of his keyboard.

"I've been told grading is awful," Min offers. He's never been good at conversation.

Hyun snorts. "It is. Did you never have to grade each other in law school?"

He thinks about what he remembers of university. Most of his memory is taken up by childhood isolation, childhood loneliness, childhood rage. "Not really. We weren't trusted not to sabotage each other."

"How cutthroat." He sounds very amused. "Did it suit you? Were you a disciplined student?"

He wonders how much to tell him. "Not really. My uncle was in university at the same time so we studied together. He kept me disciplined. I'm not very motivated on my own."

Hyun's mug clicks in the background. He always sets it down whole and entire, none of the double-tap of less certain men like Joon-young. "Why law, then?"

"How many professions reward a personality like mine?" Min asks back. A question for a question is bad manners, but tit for tat is the best approach with hyung the same way it is the best approach to use with his criminal clients. "There are tools people use to deal with each other that I … just don't have."

"It is true," Hyun says, "that certain professions self-select for certain personality traits. But I think you ape emotional competence very well for your circumstances."

Min pulls the worst face he can think of. Hyung is as patronising as Joon-young sometimes, and more often than not for the same reasons. It's infuriating. "I'm nowhere near as good as I should be."

"Like I said." Hyun takes a bite out of something crunchy. The positive part of calling hyung in his morning: he's a morning person like Joon-young and similarly more forgiving. The negative part: the disgusting noises he makes when he eats breakfast. "You can't cite others' feelings, so you cite the law."

"Does it bother you that I am this way?" He's wondered. Hyun studies this sort of thing for a living.

"No. It probably should, but no. I understand it. You know I appreciate the effort, right? You don't have to call me at hours that suit me."

"If I don't, you're cranky," Min points out as he waits for a left turn. "I'd rather you were in the mood for me. Is that strange?"

Hyung chuckles. "Not at all. Tell me about your day."

"Not much to say," Min says. He says the same thing every time, three or four times a week depending on Hyun's teaching schedule, and hyung never lets him get away with it. At this point it's as familiar a ritual as the way hyung's voice thickens after he eats cereal with milk.

"There must be something, Sun-ho," hyung says.

Min knows what he's doing. He's read Joon-young's books. Teaching engagement, absorption, empathy. Behavioural modelling.

He likes that hyung bothers. But he also resents being spoonfed by the person who did this to him to begin with, a constant reminder that this is hyung, with everything that means, and this is the man who left him to Joon-young and still sees things that ought to be fixed.

It's an insult to Joon-young. It's an insult to a person who is far better than Min, far better, and it reminds Min how far away he is from the things Joon-young is capable of. Min might be able to say _I am sad_ or _I am angry_ , but Joon-youn can say what it is that drives him. He can talk about the cries of children, the way it feels as though they are his own.

Min can't do even that much. Everything begins and ends with hyung in an ouroboros of _hyung, hyung_ and broken promises and Joon-young kneeling at his bedside over the years, changing cloths on his forehead, face lined and grim as he watched over him and only slept once Min could stand long enough to go to the bathroom by himself.

He would never have done that for anyone. He never did it for Joon-young or the albatrosses. It never occurred to him to do it. The idea is still alien. Why would he? There's no clear reason. It doesn't progress as far as having a reason why not. It's just, in itself, something that isn't relevant. There's no reason to make excuses for something that is irrelevant in itself.

It sits easier to think hyung might have a professional interest in his paltry attempts at guidance. That Min is relevant that way, and not because of something Min doesn't understand.

"Sun-ho," hyung says.

Min realises he's in his spot, sitting in park with the engine idling. He must have driven the rest of the way home without knowing.

It happens sometimes. More often when he calls hyung while he's driving. It's as though hyung takes all of his attention, the same way he always has, and everything else might as well be a spatter of rain.

"My day was you," Min tells him, and gets out of the car. One of the neighbours has their lights on and curtains open; their oldest is watching a variety with subtitles, noodles hanging down their chin. Their youngest sits on a table behind them with a scattered bunch of crayons and a fierce frown. The middle child is nowhere to be seen.

Min turns away. They aren't his concern either.

"That's healthy," hyung says, sarcasm so thick even Min understands it. "Are you home now?"

"Yes. You asked." He unlocks, examines, begins the ritual of spying differences, alterations, the too-perfect alignments of someone trying to fix a hasty mistake. So far it looks like nothing's changed. The paintings are at the same series of angles; his fresh one is still exactly square to the main window. His paints are in the same order.

Hyun types in his ear as Min looks over the upstairs, taking off his clothes to air them and change into painting clothes.

"What are you doing?" Hyun asks. "It sounds like you're in the kitchen or the studio."

"Studio," Min tells him, and he checks his brushes and palette and gets to mixing, the knife easy in his hand as he blends a blue-green to the right amount of mint. "I'm working on a commission."

That he hasn't had much taste for his own painting lately is another thing, and not something he will say to either of them. It still feels wrong to go on as usual when there is this crack inside him with an unfamiliar hunger. These days he's grown to like _Sun-ho_ from hyung's mouth, and grown to almost dread _Min_ even as he anticipates it will happen one day, and all the paintings thereof start out as faint strokes and end in a muddle of flesh tones blending on canvas without relevance or reference.

Hyung makes an interested noise. He always seems interested in Min's art; it's something Min likes about him. Joon-young strolls in and takes a view whenever he wants and that is appreciation too, but hyung _asks_. "What's the brief?"

"It's for a cafe opening downtown." He considers the lighting and brush size and picks up on the other side of where he left off, vague guides reminding him of his original plans. "It's meant to be a street scene. It's not well-suited to my style but the owner is a friend of someone I work with."

"Your colleague must be an influential person," hyung says. "A prosecutor or senior partner at least."

"You're right," Min says. It feels good to say that to hyung, and a smile comes easier than usual. "A senior partner very influential in the promotions process. An office would be nice."

Hyun laughs. "With a window?"

"In three years." Min has a plan.

It's not really his plan -- Joon-young came up with most of it -- but so far things are following along as they ought. Criminals deliver cases and he closes them. Very few of the cases are Joon-young timing revelations to the right people at the right time and sending them to Min; murder is more generous than that, and certainly more generous than Joon-young.

"I look forward to visiting your windowless office," hyung says. "I have a window but it's about a foot square. Thirty centimetres or so."

"That sounds nice," Min says. Even in a cubicle the windows are behind him and catch the light strangely. A small window like that would let some light in and limit the glare to a fixed area.

"It is. I'm fortunate. One of my department heads has their office underground in a cupboard. They claim they have a strong resistance to depression due to lack of light, but …"

Min chuckles. "Wait for erratic behaviour," he advises. "It's easier to have proof."

"It's always like that," hyung says. "I hope to see you soon."

He smiles into the phone, shifting it to his shoulder to clean his brush.  "You will. Do you like the idea?"

"Of course."

***

_Room 206_ , hyung texts him on his return in August, accompanied by a selca in front of the arrivals signage, hair wild, eyes tired, his smile so, so broad. _Come see me?_

_Yes_ , Min answers. Of course he says yes.

Eight months of flirting by phone and email and selcas, eight months of being told over and over again that hyung wants and likes him, of good-morning texts and shared complaints about other people's lack of standards and _I'm thinking about you tonight, Sun-ho_ , and Min is stuck with his phone clutched to his chest, feeling something he doesn't know how to describe.

Something he doesn't think Joon-young could explain even if Min asked. He's sure Joon-young's never felt like this. Joon-young didn't understand when Min said _he likes to flirt_. He'd asked if Min liked that in a person, the same way he used to ask their neighbours about good electricians every time they moved, and Min knew then that for once in his life he knew something Joon-young didn't. Hyung gives him so many things these days.

"You look like you just got somebody off a triple homicide charge," Chun-seok says from across the staff kitchen. "Need me to step out and let you have a go?" He fists his hand, jerks it up and down in the air, eyebrows wagging.

"No," Min says, putting his phone in his pocket and taking his lunch out of the fridge. It's untouched. Even the stupid ones learn from a bout or two of salmonella. "I'm capable of delayed gratification."

"I am too!"

Min eyes him very deliberately. He knows Chun-seok knows Min saw the porn on his desktop three weeks ago.

"Jesus fuck, you're going to be unbearable all day," Chun-seok moans. "Shut up and go close the Chairman Kim login, I need to edit."

"After I finish this," he says.

Min keeps it open for another two hours, munching very, very slowly with very, very small bites and reactivating his access every fifteen minutes.

"Are you _done_?"

He holds up the container, his noodles so cold and congealed they don't move when he shakes it. "Not yet."

"Stop taking out your good mood on me! I don't deserve it!"

"I suppose that's right," Min says peaceably. "Go ahead now."

Chun-seok leans aggressively on his shoulder. "No, I'm going to stand here and watch you log out. I don't trust you."

Min smiles up at him. "Ah, you're thinking like an attorney. How long did that take?"

Chun-seok goes bright red cursing at him and Min giggles.

Hyung is waiting for him.

***

It's hard not to smile when hyung answers his door. He looks freshly showered, fluff-haired and moisturised, and Min wants so very badly to kiss him.

"Hi," Min says.

Hyung drags him inside, shuts the door, and presses him back against it with a kiss exactly as luxuriant as Min feels, and Min leans into him eagerly, pulling at his shirt. Even panting in hyung's breath doesn't feel disgusting, not when he's finally, finally touching him again. "Did you miss me?"

"Yes." Hyung helps Min out of his clothes, setting them aside on a chair. "Yes, I did." He takes Min's hand, his palms still so weirdly soft to Min. Joon-young's hands are not soft. "Come to bed."

Min goes gladly. Touching him is all the better for kissing him, and tasting him is all the better touching him, and looking at him is all the better for seeing how he looks back at Min.

The first round is over very quickly and hyung laughs under him and strokes Min's shoulders. "Not just me. That's good."

"No. You lived in my phone for eight months and it wasn't enough," Min tells him, more solemn than he means to be, and he takes a tissue off the nightstand and wipes their semen off Hyun's shirt.

The very idea of keeping this, prolonging this, makes him dizzy. It feels good to think about it. Having him like this, unknowing. These days he likes that unknowing as much as he hates it.

Hyung's face is complicated, and Min frowns. "What?"

"Do you remember that first time we had sex on the phone and you told me what to do?"

Min hadn't forgotten, but he didn't particularly keep it in mind either. It wasn't something he ever thought hyung would bother to follow through. He was likely pretending and Min doesn't want hyung to pretend to his face. "What about it?"

Hyun gestures at himself, an eyebrow quirked. "You said, when I came back…?"

He blinks. "You meant it? Then --" He breaks off. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah." He pats Min's stomach. "Let's try it."

Min doesn't entirely believe him. He crawls up hyung's body to rest his weight on his chest, a hand on the headboard for balance, and hyung helps him, shifts the pillows so Min can straddle his shoulders. "Then if I told you to suck my cock like this?"

"It's dangerous," hyung says. But he's not pushing Min away; if anything his hands on Min's thighs are holding him in place.

Min breathes in, fingers flexing, and rides his hips forward. He pushes against his hands, pushes his cock against his cheek. He's halfway hard already, anticipation making his mouth water and his body tense. He wants to know if hyung will do it. What it'll be like to give him orders and watch him do it. "I know. But if I told you?"

"Then I would." Hyun looks very alert. Focused. All of his attention, it looks like, and it's a heady thing to have. Hyun here in the flesh again, centered on him because Min demands it. Min can demand it. Is demanding it.

It makes him hard, makes his breath come short. He reaches for a condom, not bothering to move away as he rips open the packet and rolls it down. "Do it."

Hyung does.

Min moans surprise. He didn't expect him to _do_ it like this. More banter. Some sort of promise extracted not to hurt him, or to stop at some signal. Some negotiation of the danger. Not hyung's mouth around him. Not hyung lifting his head to take more of him in. Not hyung's eyes shut and his fingertips kneading Min's hips and the way he gasps like it feels good.

Power sings in his head. In this moment he could do anything. He could choke him. He could grab him and have him and hyung -- hyung might not say no. Hyung might want it.

It's a delicious, delicious idea, made even more delicious by the way hyung grunts when Min pushes into his mouth, and Min finds himself panting, both hands gripping the headboard, his head sagged between his arms to watch hyung in the shadows from the nightstand's pathetic bundle of lumens. Hyung sucking his cock, Min kneeling over him. Min fucking his face. Now this, this is pornographic, and Min will paint it as soon as he gets home and give it to hyung as a gift so he can remember it too.

"More," Min says, and hyung lifts his head and does. His head even lifts high enough for Min to put another pillow underneath. Hyun splutters a little bit, swallows and gasps, and Min grins down at him, enjoying the little flash of discomfort as much as the saliva collecting in the corners of hyung's mouth.

He told hyung to do it, and hyung did.

It's a thirst in him. He wants more. His mouth waters and his lips dry as he pants and watches him and thinks of possibilities.

Hyung looks so good in pain. It's sexy, really, the way his brows twitch together when Min pushes in a little more, how his nose wrinkles up and shows a momentary bit of tooth.

Min could do so much to him. He could do anything, and he shuffles a little closer, hyung nearer to gagging now, his fingers hard in Min's skin but his arms lax like he really will let him. Min wonders how much. How far. How much pain he can extract.

It's delirious, this joy. He's so glad to see hyung again. So glad to fuck him again. And then this, too, and he feels stuffed to bursting with the temptation to cry out _hyung_ , _hyung_.

Min sags forward over him, arousal riding high, and hyung chokes and looks up at him, eyes reddened, squinting. His face is stretched from Min's cock stuffed in his mouth.

He looks like -- Min doesn't know what he looks like. Helpless, maybe. Like he really would let him, He is letting him, and in that moment, watching hyung's tears well and leak into his ears, Min believes him. He believes he followed instructions when Min gave him orders over the phone. He believes him that he's doing it now. Obeying.

He's never seen hyung like this before. It doesn't feel as good as it should.

Hyung promised not to let him. He promised. He said they both shouldn't. He _promised_ and Min thought he could trust him at least that little. Even with everything. Self-preservation should have stopped him. What can anyone trust if not that?

Min backs off, pulls out and crawls off him, and he doesn't know what this unsettlement is, only that hyung should have stopped him. He's not meant to let him go too far. He should have been more like Joon-young and _stopped him_.

"You shouldn't have let me do that," his voice as thick as if he'd just done it to himself and not hyung, and he draws a rattling breath and tears off the condom. "You shouldn't have."

Hyung sits up slowly and wipes his mouth. "Why not?"

"For the same reason you didn't fuck me dry that time!" Min bursts out, turning to him. "You _promised_. We agreed."

But where he expects hurt or pain Hyun's expression is only set, concentrated, and the sight of the little smile around his mouth evaporates Min's disbelief into a huff. He throws the condom at him, sick with fury that he's put himself in a position where Hyun can betray him like this, and hyung's easy catch only makes him seethe worse.

"You're testing me." It sits heavily in him, makes his head fuzz. "It was a test."

He knots the condom and drops it in a bin beside the bed, sitting back against the rumpled mass of pillows. "I had to be sure."

Hyung's in control now. Min can see that in his shoulders, the open ease of his hand on his knee. He feels like he's in control of whatever this is, and Min doesn't like it.

"You knew a lot about me already," Min says tightly. "So? Did I disappoint you?"

"Actually, no." Hyun has the gall to touch his hand. "I'm glad you noticed, Sun-ho."

Min swallows down further spite and gets the bathrobes, throwing one at hyung and putting on the other. The thickness of it, the way it makes his body indefinable, helps. Putting his hands in the deep pockets, sleeves pushing up to his wrist, helps too. It's better than looking at hyung.

The bed creaks. Hyung leans closer. Min doesn't look at him. "I mean it. I had to know what you would do with the opportunity. I had to know what you were used to." Hyun blows out a breath. "I found a second person to corroborate the first witness in Busan."

It's been so long that Min almost forgot about challenging him like that. _Find someone else_ , he'd said. And hyung did. Hyung followed that order too.

Last year this would've been wonderful. But now he feels like he's stuck in a rejected script. Like he's changed his mind but the rest of the world hasn't and he's the wrong one all over again.

Min gives into the role expected of him. "And?"

"You said you would tell me, once I found a person. I have found two. I believe you. My brother was in Busan eighteen years ago, where I could have found him if I looked for him. If _anyone_ looked for him, they would've found him and Lee Joon-young, who claimed to be his guardian." There's pain there now, a deep, deep grief. Min doesn't know why. It can't just be the missed opportunity. "I take the point. Now you should tell me the rest."

If Hyun did know anything about Min he wouldn't be speaking to him like this, would he? Hyun is a normal person, with normal rebellions. Well-adjusted. Hyun would not be speaking to him, whatever promises he made, if he knew. He wouldn't have kissed him. He wouldn't have used these tactics. "What do you think I know?"

"Where is Lee Joon-young?" hyung asks. "That's all I want. Tell me where he is. Just that."

The thought of letting him discover Joon-young's perfect cleverness still would have been a pleasure a few months ago. He can picture it, how he would have orchestrated Hyun's despair. Enjoyed it. Wallowed in it. Strung it out, a little at a time, until he'd driven him half-mad realising all of Joon-young's pretty albatrosses with their pretty ears and unbroken necks and Min foremost among them, lost forever. He would have relished it every moment of every day.

But for a little while there, it felt like a chance at something else. For a little while.

He'd been happy to see him. He'd thought hyung was too.

"That's all you want?" he repeats, stunned, wanting to be wrong. He wants hyung to take it back.

But he doesn't. "Yeah. Just that."

Min really should have known better. How did he let himself forget in selcas and sexy texts and filming himself that Jung Sun-ho is nothing, really, to anybody? Hyung comes back to Min because Min strings out information. Not anything else. Not because Min ever had the chance to make himself be someone hyung wants.

Bitterness coats Min's tongue, familiar rage running through his skin and prickling his scalp and arms, gathering steam until he's a creature of bones and teeth, and he breaks the long silence.

"So I don't matter."

"If it was like that I wouldn't be asking," Hyun says, terrible and sharp. "I worry about you. Lee Joon-young is a very dangerous person."

"Not to me," heartsick. Joon-young is right. The brothers shouldn't reconcile. There's nothing in Hyun for Min, not until he bothers to see what is in front of his face, and he hasn't. He hasn't. Not Min. Not everything Min's tried to be either.

Hyun's throat clicks, audible, and Min hates him. "You do know him."

Know him? No. No-one knows Joon-young except Miss Park. She knows him but she doesn't have him. Min is the one who has him, and he knows the value of that. It's more than he could ever possibly say to Hyun.

"I don't. I never did. You say he was Min's guardian? The man who was Min's guardian, whether he was Lee Joon-young or not, was kind to me back then. That's all."

Min loosens his grip on the pocket lining with an effort, lint painful under his nails. Establish character, Joon-young always told him. Find the person. Find the lever. He thinks at last he has the right one. Hyun's lever isn't Min. It's his pride.

He never understood why some of his clients avoided looking at him while they told him of their deeds but he still can't bring himself to look at hyung's face. "I won't say I liked that man. But he made sure I ate. He asked me how I slept. If I did my homework. I appreciated it because I was lonely back then and I would appreciate it now if you did your homework before making these demands of me."

"I did," Hyun says, tone like he's clever after all. "Neither of them remembers a Jung Sun-ho. Do you know why?"

Min laughs. It's not anything. Just a facsimile of Joon-young. "You don't really think they'd remember someone like me," he says bitterly and gets up. "I'm not worth remembering. Or keeping. Or anything. Am I?"

"That's not true. That's not what I meant." He can hear hyung's impatience. Too bad. "Wait. You're taking it the wrong way. Sun-ho. _Sun-ho_."

Min slams the bedroom door, jams it with a chair, and gets dressed.

Sun-ho is a respectable person. Sun-ho is a good attorney with a good job and a good degree. He works hard like a normal person. He defends criminals like an ethical person. Sun-ho has done everything Hyun wanted. Sun-ho is willing to like anything hyung wants. All these things Min wanted to be for his hyung if it meant having him again.

Asking for Min would've been another thing entirely. It would feel _good_ to think his hyung wants him more than Jung Sun-ho.

But _Joon-young_?

Everything Sun-ho is, all the things he's done, and hyung tested him like this so he can exchange him for Joon-young.

Wants to. Just like that.

Here Min was thinking of letting him have Sun-ho, and this is what hyung wants to do with him.

Stupid little Min. Stupid. Stupid.

Hyung _gave him away_ once already, hyung already as much _told him_ that between Sun-ho and Joon-young he would choose Joon-young, how could he -- how could he let himself --

Min manages to drive ten kilometres or so before he pulls up the knot of his tie, stuffs it into his mouth, makes sure the windows are firmly rolled up, and gives into the jerky, bilous wails clawing up from his belly.

***

Min isn't expecting to find Hyun on his front steps with a bouquet, but that's what happens when he eventually manages to drive home. He'd had to stop to scream three times on the highway and stop again to eat something ridiculously caloric before the lack of food made him careless. He supposes it took more time to collect himself than he thought.

Hyun whirls at the sound of his footsteps and blinks when Min takes two exact steps and activates the motion-sensor light above the door.

"Sun-ho." He sounds relieved, of all things, and when he approaches his clothes look rumpled, his hair just as untidy, and it makes something clench very hard in his gut to think Hyun, of the perfect hair, of the fussy adjustments just so whenever Min meets him in public, hasn't bothered to fix the lock sticking up at the back.

The flowers are hyacinths.

Of course they are.

Min imagines, very clearly and deliberately, jamming the stalks through hyung's eyes. His lashes festooned with petals and blood. It helps a little.

"I hate hyacinths," Min says.

"I thought you liked them," Hyun says. "My mistake." He lowers the bouquet, swinging it hard enough to loosen several flowers from their stalks. The inevitability of explaining to Joon-young why there are hyacinth petals all over the place only makes him twitch irritation. "Listen --"

"I'm tired," Min interrupts, as flat as he can make it when Hyun is right in front of him. He juggles his keys out of his pocket and brushes past Hyun, and he can feel him staring.

He wants to buckle. He wants to turn about and beg for things he doesn't know how to beg for. He wants to give into the heat of Hyun standing beside him. Hyun bringing him flowers. He wants to sink to his knees.

But it hurt, and it still hurts. Hyung hurt him for eighteen years and this should be just one more thing. It should be, and it is. But this time he did it to Sun-ho. Min tried being Sun-ho, being hyung's lover. His port girl. He tried being someone Hyun maybe could like enough to keep, and it turns out in the end he's a failure at that too.

Min tells himself he doesn't care. It's taking too much time to find the right key.

"You took it the wrong way," hyung says.

He doesn't care. He reminds himself very firmly of that. He doesn't care.

"I know how how you took it and it's not what I meant." Hyung exhales, his breath warm against Min's cheek. He's standing too close. Min doesn't have to look to know his hands are in his pockets. "I did manipulate you, but it wasn't to hurt you. It wasn't to throw you away."

He stops fumbling, draws in a careful breath of the sort he uses when Joon-young has found yet another mewling millstone of a child to drag with them, and sets himself to finding the right key. It's easier when he's calm.

"Perhaps I haven't made my feelings clear enough," Hyun goes on. "But it's very important that I find Lee Joon-young."

Hyung really has no idea. He has no idea at all. He might have suspicions, guesses, but for whatever reason, he isn't using them like he should. He's just here, instead, to do whatever it is he's doing. It can't only be annoying him. Another manipulation. His eyes ache and his head hurts.

Min wants to turn him away. But if he could he'd never have approached him in that bar long ago to begin with.

"Come in," he says once he has the door open. "Don't say anything. Just come in."

Hyung follows him with the the bouquet, and he drops it in the trash and just stands there in Min's unlit kitchen, moonlight bouncing off the counters and shadowing his face. Min finds himself having to hold back tears. Not the sounds that felt like they came from something wild and separate, some other part of him claiming his vocal chords for its own, but messy bog-standard weeping. Min hates it.

"Come here," Hyun says, and coaxes him close, tilts Min's head down against his shoulder. "I've already apologised but it's obvious you don't believe me."

"I don't have anything to say about people from eighteen years ago. You can leave now," Min mutters into his shirt. "You don't have to keep pretending to want me."

"I'm not pretending," Hyun says, immediate like it's some sort of comfort. "Didn't I promise? You don't have to try to keep me interested. That means," fingers flexing on the back of Min's neck, so like Joon-young when he's trying to make Min understand something important, "if there is something more, it's okay to tell me."

Min finds himself choking. What is all this stupid, useless emotion for if he can't make even hyung understand?

Hyung nudges him. "You can't think I go to this effort for everyone. I've never bothered to buy anyone flowers."

"You should stop," he says very quietly, instead of everything else. Anything else.

Hyun's angry, Min can tell, and he's braced for an interrogation, braced for Hyun to get sick of this, of him. He thinks Hyun would like to shake him. But all he does is grunt and hold on a little longer before he lets go. "All right. I'm tired too. The flight was long."

Sitting with him and cups of tea and reheated bulgogi is awkward now, strange, and Min can't quite settle. His toes need flexing and his fingers need stretching and there's an itch between his shoulder blades he twists to reach.

"Enough," hyung says beside him, his hand settling heavy on Min's thigh. "Enough already. I can go home."

"No," Min blurts, locking his hands around his wrist. "If you want me, you should kiss me."

"Ah. I wasn't sure." But hyung leans over him and like that, they're kissing again, hyung's mouth somehow the same in how strong it is, how much Min enjoys the way it feels when Hyun makes that same decision each time to _do_ it and really, truly get down to the sort of kissing Min only sees in action movies. It's hero-and-the-girl kissing, when they go to bed before the big day and spill all their feelings into the camera so everyone understands what the fade to black afterward really means.

But here there is no fade to black, it goes on and on, Min more aroused and more desperate by the minute, and he whimpers, sinks into having hyung so close, lets himself make the tiny noises that make Joon-young smirk and Hyun's hands wander. At least there's this, isn't there? Like before. At least there's this. Even if it isn't really what hyung wants.

"Your shirt," he mumbles, grabbing his collar.

Hyun crosses his arms and takes it off, just like that, and even though Min thought and thought and thought about his chest, the solid muscle of his arms and the even more solid strength through his abdomen, thought about it until he can call the picture of hyung's body at a second's notice, it's still so good to press his palms to his shoulders and drag them down his body. Hyung is familiar.

In this now and his betrayals always. "What do you want?"

"I think you should tell me where you keep your condoms," Hyun says. He kisses Min's neck, one of his hands going between Min's legs and sliding up so smoothly it takes him a moment to flinch, knees banging against Hyun's hips.

Hyung stills.

Min thought he could do this. He didn't know there was a chance he couldn't.

"You just surprised me," Min says, defensive against all that horrible quiet. "That was an accident. You can keep going."

"If you're sure." He sounds neutral. "You haven't done that before."

"You haven't told me I'm worthless before," Min snaps, a rush of words that feel like the quick, spilling way their mother's blood stained the floor.

Hyung rears back so fast he almost overbalances. "I don't care if you haven't forgiven me for your misunderstanding, but don't accuse me of things I haven't said."

"You want Lee Joon-young," Min says. "I heard you. His location. That was all you wanted. Not me."

"No. You misunderstood. That is not what I said. You should realise this isn't about you. It's about the fact that I still don't know where my brother is or what Lee Joon-young did to him. You're a criminal defense attorney. You've heard of the concept of justice."

He wants to laugh. This is what hyung thinks of him. His best, he's tried his very best, and still this is what hyung thinks of Min. There's no hiding from him.

"Justice?" Min says, tasting the word. "Yes. I have heard of it." His voice spools out of his throat, brittle and deliberately sweet, and he curls his fingers against his palms. "The people you think he killed are dead. They will be dead if you find him and still dead if you don't. If you do find your brother, those years are still gone. Do you really think you can make up for that?"

Hyun leans down. Min glories in the hardness of his mouth, the flat of his eyes. "I'll try."

"You'll fail," Min says, just as even. His pulse thuds in his head. There's a scream inside him. It never went away. Even with all of his theatrics in the car, it never went away. Hyung is so close and his body hasn't forgotten about fucking or how sexy hyung is shirtless and it only makes Min angrier. "At least now I know for certain your brother isn't the only one you'll give away to Lee Joon-young when you get the chance."

Hyung seizes him, hands hard, panting in his face. His lips are trembling. "I never did. I never, ever did. How can you say I did?"

"They _both_ said you gave him away," Min whispers triumphantly, and grins into Hyun's grip on his throat.

Hyung doesn't stay after that.

***

"Hyacinths?" Joon-young asks him the next morning, examining a petal between his fingers when Min steps out of the door.

Min's too tired, too sore over hopes he should've known better than to have, to be afraid of what would have happened if hyung somehow changed his mind and came back.

"Someone thought I liked them," Min says. "They're in the trash."

Joon-young smiles. "Have you eaten?"

He lets himself sink into Joon-young looking after him, lets him take his elbow in two fingers and shut the door and lead him along to the car. "A bit."

Min pouts in the passenger seat and picks under his fingernails. Joon-young telegraphs his endless, eternal amusement at Min's feelings and buys him coffee from the worst franchise they pass.

"Why did you ask me to come?" He doesn't look over at Min, too busy craning his neck at the traffic.

"I just …" He can't tell him about anybody. Can't lie and say it was the visiting attorney. Can't lie and say he brought someone home. The dates match too closely. "I didn't want to be alone."

"Ah." Joon-young purses his mouth at the jam ahead and bullies into the turning lane to escape down a side street. "It is a good morning to be with family."

Min doesn't want to relent out of his sulk, but he feels it. "It's Monday."

"Yes. Yes, it is," Joon-young says. He taps his fingers on the wheel, nods decisively. "It is definitely Monday. I was praising it in defiance of modern pop culture. Mmm."

Min gives in and laughs for him. Joon-young turns his head and smiles for him in return.

With or without hyung, however little hyung wants of him even when he thinks he is Jung Sun-ho, Joon-young is his. And he is Joon-young's.

"Do you plan to see Hyun this time?" Min asks. "You're looking forward to it, aren't you?"

Joon-young nods. "I think he will be a good colleague. His new book was interesting."

"I told him he was too fond of biological determinism." Min studies his coffee, wrinkling his nose. It's not really coffee. It's a brown caffeine drink. He wants to throw it out the window.

There's a deliberate pause in the atmosphere. And he tells _Min_ not to be dramatic. "Do you think he is wrong?"

"I think what's done cannot be undone," Min says.

Joon-young actually bothers to look surprised. "Shakespeare? This is unexpected."

He's careful to make it sound rhetorical. "Hyung can talk about biology and maladjustment as much as he likes. Our father still mistook him for me. Don't you think the simpler explanation is that our father was absent and stupid?"

"Min," Joon-young says. Min watches him decide against pulling over. Watches his mouth pull, the way it always does when Min does something Joon-young has to fit into a different frame than he expected.

It worries Joon-young when that happens. A worried Joon-young is a murderous Joon-young and getting hyung's attention at the moment would be pouring lemon juice down a freshly-fucked throat. Joon-young can keep it off Min. He doesn't care.

He thinks about what Joon-young would say if Min told him hyung was willing to trade Sun-ho for the chance to see him. He'd probably bother to pretend to be sorry about it for Min's sake.

_This isn't about you_ , hyung said.

But it is.

"Don't," Min says, and he closes his eyes and ruins his hair against the headrest getting comfortable. "I'm just tired."

"Remember when I used to give us the day off work and drive you around?"

"I remember. I'll be fine."

Joon-young pats his thigh and unlocks Min's door. Min squeezes his hand under the dashboard, gathers his briefcase and his sense of Jung Sun-ho, criminal law attorney and forgivable asshole, and sails out of the car.

***

He apparently looks terrible enough on the way in that fifteen minutes into his email Chun-seok shows up with a cup of the good coffee. "I found the machine's new place," he reports unnecessarily, putting it down hard enough a few drops escape the splashproof cover and spatter his paperwork. "You're an asshole for keeping it secret."

He'll help the head secretary of their pool move the machine tomorrow. "Among other things," Min says, highlighting a batch of twenty emails in a row and forwarding them to his least favourite paralegal.

Chun-seok snorts and perches on his desk. "What did that smug fuck ever do to you?"

Min raises an eyebrow on the side facing him.

"Other than be almost as smug as you. What's wrong, hey?" Chun-seok nudges his armrest with his knee and almost makes him forward an email about the kitchen chores to a senior partner.

"Chun-seok," Min hisses. "Get off my desk."

"There you are." He claps Min on the shoulder but unlike the firm smacks he usually doles out his hand lingers, fingers squeezing on bone. "Let me know if you need off early. I figured out how to polish Attorney Jang's ass."

Min wrinkles his nose. "If I need that it won't be today. Get away from me."

Chun-seok laughs and finally, finally gets up. "Oh, yeah, your client left a message at the desk. I didn't know you were in the Yang family stable? But your phone's off or something."

"No, it's not." He blinks and reaches for his phone.

It was off. He turned it off after he texted Joon-young for a pickup because he didn't want to hear anything from hyung, didn't want anything to do with him, and he just -- forgot to turn it back on. He can't let hyung do this to him.

Chun-seok looks concerned, of all things. It's unbearable. A mass of new notifications rattles in his hand. Three missed calls from Yang Seung-hoon. Six. Ten. Three from hyung. Twelve from Seung-hoon. "Go away."

"Okay, okay. Asshole."

He watches the number of missed calls from Seung-hoon climb to thirty-three, then stall. Min steps out to call him back. "What is it?"

" _Where were you_?"

He doesn't have to defend himself to the likes of Seung-hoon. "What is it?"

"I killed her. I -- I killed -- I killed her, I -- she -- she made me, she -- I killed her."

Min sighs. He only predicted this, what, a year and a half ago? He must be slipping. "Where are you?"

"I'm -- I'm still here. I killed her. She made me do it. She --"

"Call Attorney Choi."

"I don't like Attorney Choi," Seung-hoon blubbers. "He wouldn't understand."

This is his own fault, Min can understand, for cultivating Seung-hoon as he did. Seung-hoon was very nicely placed for events which would catch hyung's eye. It's not his fault that Min left him primed but unprepared because hyung decided Sun-ho was worth fucking and Min let it distract him.

He breathes out.

"You have to help me!"

Joon-young wants hyung's attention? He can have it. Hyung wants Joon-young's attention? He can have it. They can both get what they want. Min hopes they choke on it.

"I'll call someone else. But you have to stay exactly where you are. Which is?"

"Her place. I'm in her bedroom. She's _dead_ , you have to help me --"

"Then help me by staying there while I fix it. Understand, hyung?"

"Yes. Yes, I understand."

Min hangs up and dials Joon-young, knowing some actions cannot be undone and this is one of them. "I made a mistake. The director acted on his own."

"Ah." Joon-young clicks his tongue, then clicks it again. Min waits tensely. It's best not to rush Joon-young when he's thinking. "But it might be a useful mistake. If you didn't do it on purpose."

He hates admitting his mistakes. He hates telling Joon-young that he did something Joon-young never would. Joon-young doesn't _forget_ people the way Min does. Joon-young is a better person. He wouldn't have forgotten about dim, needy Seung-hoon and Seung-hoon's wretched struggles with his wretched girlfriend. "No. I didn't."

"Of course I will help." Joon-young sounds very pleasant. "Soon I will meet your hyung again. I hope you haven't said too much."

"I look forward to hearing about your pleasant reunion. He's still in her bedroom. Thank you, uncle."

"Don't thank me yet. I also had plans for that connection of yours." Joon-young hangs up.

If Joon-young was talking to anyone else like that, Min would singsong _someone's in trouble!_ and Joon-young would chuckle. But it's Min. Min is in trouble.

Min puts his head in his hand and breathes for a while, then sits down on a nearby bench, presses his phone screen to his forehead, and breathes again.

He hasn't checked Hyun's sole text yet. He doesn't know if he ever will.

Something touches him and he lifts his head to snarl, surprised by the dangle of keys in his face. It's his briefcase, he registers. His briefcase against his leg and Chun-seok's flashy Maserati keychain.

"You actually look human. It's creepy, you know?" Chun-seok jangles the keys, puts them back in his suit pocket. "I logged you out. Secretary said you didn't take your car today, so … here's your stuff. I'll drive you. You're welcome."

"We're not friends. I don't remember us being friends," Min says.

Chun-seok rolls his eyes. "Get your butt in my car."

Min gets his butt into Chun-seok's very expensive and very ugly car, gives his address, and says nothing for the rest of the ride. Chun-seok rolls the windows down and puts on some sort of pop music, the vaguely current stuff that might've been played ten years ago or on heavy public rotation in the last month. Min stares out the window, holding his phone face-down against his thigh.

When they get there it takes Chun-seok flapping his hand at him for Min to turn his attention away from asphalt and passing glimpses of rubbish-strewn gutters. He didn't know it was possible for Chun-seok to keep his mouth shut for this long. "Go on. We're here, right? Go. Get out."

Min collects his briefcase from the back seat. He has just one question, his finger on the beveled edge of the window. Chun-seok could roll it up and crush a bone. Min knows he won't. "Why?"

"Why what? Why'd I take you home?" Chun-seok grimaces, rolls his neck. "Look, you're an asshole. But you're the butthole weed of assholes and you're good under pressure. You grew on me." He slaps the wheel and takes the car out of park. "Take the day, get over it, and I'll see you tomorrow." He scowls. "Jesus _fuck_ would you do me a favour and get your greasy mitts off my car?"

Min drops his hand and watches after him until the obnoxious racing stripe paintjob is well out of sight, his face tugging itself here and there until he touches his mouth and realises he's pleased. He didn't think they were friends. He hadn't aimed for it. Cultivation, maybe. A useful cooperative resource if not a particularly reliable one. Chun-seok, on the other hand --

Well. He did succeed at something, didn't he? Even if by accident, Jung Sun-ho is valuable to someone.

Holding that breath gives him enough courage to read hyung's text. It's dated three hours ago.

_Let's try that again under better conditions. Same room number._

He wonders if it would work. Min is in enough of Seung-hoon's phone records that he needs an alibi and hyung is not a shy man who will refuse to say he was with Min. No. The opposite. Hyung is prideful. Hyung will not say he was _not_ with Jung Sun-ho.

_This isn't about you_ , hyung said.

Min sighs to himself. He knows who it really is about, for all hyung's bluster, for all his want to delude himself into thinking he means more to hyung than he does. The knowledge doesn't surprise him so much as feel inevitable. When it is between Min and Joon-young, when the metaphors run out and they are blade to blade and face to face, hyung will choose Joon-young again and it won't be Min's concern which of them survives. Because hyung is right. It's not about Min.

Yes. Hyung will be his alibi. That is the point of this meeting. Not whatever excuses hyung thinks Jung Sun-ho is worth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter made sense. >_< Working on the next one right now!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated the tags to put in an explicit "Abuse" tag for this chapter, because it's warranted. 
> 
> Please take care of yourselves and thanks so, so much for your awesome comments. I haven't replied because I'm an awkward doofus, but please know they are loved and appreciated and ruminated on. A friend said, while I was sharing squee, that my commenters are the best. I wholeheartedly agree.

Min doesn't smile this time when Hyun answers the door, tired in one of the bathrobes and his hair perfect again. "I have the day off."

Hyun considers him, mouth set, openly and systematically scrutinising him from head to toe. His face doesn't relax when he steps back. "Good. Come in."

There's glasses on the table, one of them smeared in tannin tailings and a bottle of wine already open. Min pours himself a glass and turns back to Hyun. He waits.

Hyun rubs at the corners of his eyes. "Sit down."

"No." Min takes a sip. It's thick, lingering on his tongue and stinging his nose. He folds his arms, rests his elbow in the palm of his free hand, and tells himself he doesn't care about the way Hyun's robe gapes over his thighs.

Hyun takes a seat and tilts his head. He links his fingers in his lap like he's talking to a friend. It's all so deliberate, this set exchange between them. Their props. Their bodies. Their minds. If Min painted this everyone who saw it would know the exact situation of lovers and one-sided reconciliation. A work of triteness.

Min decides he hates the wine after all. He hates hyung and his calculated nudity too. "Get on with it."

He sighs and slumps back. "My evidence is circumstantial at best. But I am ninety-nine percent sure either Lee Min or Lee Joon-young are your nonexclusive."

He uses the same smile he practiced for his graduation photos with Chun-seok and the rest of the others connected enough to avoid failing the bar exam. "You said this before. I like the idea of being so important to you, but that would be wrong. Right?" 

Hyun shakes his head. "Simple logic. If there are two possibilities and one is eliminated by self-confession, then the other must be the answer." 

Min refuses to wonder what it was he said in particular. Min gave him a lot of hints, said too much too often, and whatever hyung has is still not what Min wants to hear. Hyung is as usual, as always, disappointing. "And?"

Hyun smiles, small and utterly galling in its pity. "You already told me your nonexclusive is not Min. Therefore by the rules of logic, he is Lee Joon-young." 

Cold crawls along his nape. Min plays at frowning, wears it lightly between his eyebrows. Jung Sun-ho is supposed to be a normal person. A normal person would frown at being accused of these things. They wouldn't feel this fizzy half-pleasure. "You assume a criminal defense attorney would take up with an infamous criminal. Isn't that a strange assumption?"

"Not unheard of. But that's not the point. The way you reacted, how you focused on my promise -- I am sure it is Lee Joon-young," Hyun says. 

Min raises an eyebrow. He thinks this prickle under his skin might be terror. "You're drawing this out. I thought it wasn't polite to dramatise serious accusations."

Hyun gets up. As he approaches he loosens the knot in his belt. Min has the chance to think a very satisfied _Joon-young will kill you too_ before hyung surprises him with a kiss and a complete lack of terrycloth around his neck.

He likes the way Hyun smells and the robe spreading doesn't help, but Min manages not to react. "Sex is the point?"

His mouth crooks. Even when hyung is far away that little gleam of teeth is unfairly handsome. Up close Min wants to kiss him until they're even prettier stained with Min's blood. 

"No, it's this." He sounds vague like he does during his lectures, rehearsed and half a beat slower than conversation. "Though there is only one percent doubt that you are hiding Lee Joon-young, I pushed you too hard. Harder than I should have. So, if you can tell me Min is all right, I will look for both of them with my own resources and wait for you to tell me the rest when you are comfortable."

Min stares back at him. It doesn't make sense. Min doesn't understand. Hyung could have Joon-young. He said that was what he wanted. All he has to do is take Min apart. Min is here to be taken apart. 

But this is so gentle. He's seen videos of hyung pinning open people's minds and rummaging for the things he wants. He's watched him do it. This is nothing like that. This is just hyung saying things. Min doesn't know what hyung expects.

"Your brother … don't you feel obligated to him?" 

He cocks his head the other way, looks Min up and down again. "He's not the only one I have an obligation to. I stopped thinking casually of you a long time ago."

It can't be true.

Hyung wants to fuck him. Min knows that these days. Approves of him sometimes. Min has let himself be easy, so there is also that. It adds up into being a convenience and as hyung has shown him, disposable. Not someone hyung would bother to lie to like this. 

"That can't be true," Min says very quietly. It's all he can manage after the last few days. "I'm just your port girl. You want Lee Joon-young. Min. I'm just --"

"I took advantage of your mental state," Hyung interrupts. "I allowed you to think it was very casual because your insecurity was a good way to glean information about them and your non-exclusive, but I let it go on too long. I won't do that anymore."

"I'm just your port girl," Min says again. It's all he knows to be true. This can't be true.

"The only one in this room that still thinks of you that way is you," hyung says, so gentle Min's throat burns with the urge to hurt him."As I said, as long as you can tell me sincerely that Min is doing well." There's a brightness in hyung's eyes. "If he's alive."

Min feels himself crumple, squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and breathes in, forces them open. Hyung is still there, warm and heavy. Even with his one percent doubt and ninety-nine percent certainty that Min is fucking Joon-young, he looks at Min like this. 

Was he ninety-nine percent certain when he sent that airport picture? When he kissed him welcome?

But he must be lying. Min is nothing to him. Sun-ho is nothing to him.

There's a weird feeling in his mouth like he wants to laugh, like if he bent to the side and tipped his head both cups of coffee he's had today, the inferior and superior, would pour out onto the carpet. Min tells him too much, in the end. He's always found it easier to tell hyung too much than too little. "He was the last time I saw him."

Min lifts his chin, enjoying hyung's shudder, the way he closes his eyes. It's just like when Min fucked his mouth, and he takes satisfaction in having hurt him first this time. At least he has that.

But knowing is more important than hyung's pain. "If not a port girl, then what?"

Hyun hums. "I think now that I know my brother is alive, you are **α**." 

He pronounces it the Greek way and Min tenses against the urge to shove him to the floor and shake him until his eyes rattle in their sockets. What does hyung think he knows, if he doesn't know it is Min in front of him? What else is there that could be important? What clues did he give away by accident that hyung can still talk like Sun-ho is important to him? He didn't tell hyung _when_ and hyung hasn't asked.

**α** doesn't even mean anything.

"Ah. You didn't like that. Why?" Hyung shifts their bodies together, his cock and the breadth of his thighs a lovely impression, and pulls off Min's tie. Min lets him.

"Am I not a very insecure person?" 

He wishes Joon-young were available to explain what is happening. He would know what this is meant to look like. What it is he wants from Min that he's saying these things. Joon-young is good at knowing what people want and he's almost always been able to explain things Min doesn't understand. But right now he's busy fixing Min's mistake. Min has to do this on his own somehow.

"You're textbook." Hyun studies him again. "If not α, what would be better? Let me show you. How should I?"

_You're a textbook liar_ , Min thinks.

But he needs to give Joon-young more time. Hyung's lips are so freshly red and his cock beautifully obvious, and it's not like Jung Sun-ho should matter this much to Min either. It's just a stolen name with a stolen family and a half-brother in the process of extinguishing in Joon-young's hands.

"Sex." He gets his hands under the robe, lifts it up and off hyung's shoulders, lets it drop to the floor. "Sex would be a good start."

Hyung nods and opens Min's shirt. "I thought you'd say that."

Min stops his hand with a careful grip on his wrist and Hyun looks up. He just seems curious. Interested. "Your ninety-nine percent certainty -- that doesn't stop you?"

"It doesn't stop you either," hyung says, like they're sharing a joke. "I want you, Jung Sun-ho. I want sex and I want you. Ninety-nine percent or not. Do you think that makes me a bad person?"

"Do your suspicions make me more interesting?" Min pushes him backwards onto the couch and asks the question that's been chewing at his insides. "Our long distance -- association, was that because of your suspicions?"

"If I said the connection didn't interest me, I would be lying," hyung says. "But it wasn't the only reason. I also did just like you. Not my port girl, not a diversion, but the one I am having a relationship with. Can you accept that?"

Min's never been anyone's relationship before. He likes the idea too much. He wants to believe him and he hates himself for wanting to fall back into that giddiness of hyung's foolishness and his own, the way they merged into something like a hope.

"Don't lie to me," Min tells him instead of answering, fully aware of his own hypocrisy, and distracts him. Whatever else hyung might have said if he'd allowed it, Min knows better than to think they will be promises he will keep.

But he can't distract himself. _Not a diversion_. 

What if he's telling the truth?

***

This round is Min's turn, and he decides to make hyung sweat for it. Hyun dropping to his knees and sucking his cock was a challenge and Min means to answer it.

It feels like they're trading something today in that challenge, as carefully encapsulated as passing a yolk back and forth, and Min doesn't know what it is. But he knows when it is hyung doing unto, and he knows when it is his turn to do unto hyung. This is his turn.

He's glad Hyun remembered gloves this time, no condoms wasted over hands and fingers, and the extra mobility means he can finger him as slowly as Joon-young would. 

It makes hyung restless. Min likes the way his stomach flexes when he shifts, how his fingertips drag on Min's shoulders and down his arm like he's going to beg him to be still long enough to fuck himself. Too bad Min isn't in the mood to take shortcuts.

"You have a plan," hyung mutters. He's sweating already, a bead of it running slowly down his cheek from his temple. "Don't you?"

"I do," Min acknowledges, careful to make his voice very light, skipping along his syllables. "You want to know more about my nonexclusive, so…"

Hyung grabs his wrist, whip-quick. His grip isn't strong enough to stop Min from moving his fingers inside him, and hyung visibly drags in a breath, eyes almost shut. "Not like this."

"You don't think you'll like it?"

"Sun-ho."

It's not a no, and Min smiles. "Given your suspicions, aren't you curious?"

"This isn't what I want to know," hyung says. "I want to know about you. Not this."

"This is about me," Min says, and pushes in another finger. 

Hyun sets his foot against Min's thigh and shoves him back against the arm of the couch, following it with a forearm against his collarbone and his face hard and close, Min reeling in confusion. The position is so much like the first time hyung fucked him that his mouth dries, and the memory steadies him enough that he doesn't try to break hyung's arm.

"Don't bring him into this," hyung says very quietly. There's a look to him Min doesn't understand, eyes searching Min's face. "For your sake. I want you to know that when I fuck you, I am fucking you. When we have sex, it's us. Just us." He swallows, a strange click. "That's how I want it. That's what I want. I don't want how he fucks you."

There's another of those strange noises. Min understands with an abrupt horror that Hyun is close to tears. Seeing it doesn't explain why hyung is like this, and he freezes, bewildered and angry at his own lack. He should know, shouldn't he? He should know what is wrong with hyung. He's watched him for so long.

There are so many things he doesn't know today.

Hyun tries to speak several times and Min waits him out, watching how he wets his lips, how he presses them together, breathing in hard through his nose. The way the corners of his mouth draw down. "I don't want you to be him." He sounds like he's eking it out through a gag. "You. That's what I want." His shoulders curve like saying it is a relief. "How do _you_ want to fuck me?"

Min stares at him.

Hyung makes it sound so simple. As though Min should have an answer. He's expected to have one. He knows that much. This is the sort of question people should be able to answer. All that serious tone and serious face. He should be able to answer.

How does he want to fuck hyung?

If he can't base it on Joon-young, then what can he do? What is he meant to know, to be able to answer something like that? There isn't anything else to Min. He wants to howl it, wants to claw his fingers into his eyes and shout _I'm not anyone_.

"Your nonexclusive was your first," hyung says very quietly, eyes narrowed on his face. "Your only?"

Looking at him is painful, and Min shifts his stare to his collarbone, the quick flutter of his pulse in his throat. Cowardice is easier than letting hyung see Min's inability to control his face at the moment. "Now there's you."

Hyung's arm lifts and he sits back against the other end of the couch, rubbing his hands over his face.

Min feels like he's disappointed him. But he doesn't know how he could have not disappointed him. It's Joon-young, always. It's always been Joon-young. If hyung hadn't given him away, then it wouldn't be like this. But he did and so it is like this.

"Let's move to the bed," Hyun says, and he pats Min's leg and gets up. "I'll get some water. Think about it, Sun-ho."

He wants to ask what there is to think about, but clenches it between his teeth and goes to the bedroom. Hyun has a lot of money and it shows in the thick beddings and nonessential pillows and couches. Min kneels on the side of the bed nearest the handset. No telltale ease; he's rich enough to buy the illusion of the suite being untouched.

Jealousy curdles bitter in his throat. Joon-young did his best. Min knows he did. Min still isn't grateful as he should be, all these years later, even as he can look back and recognise that he is older now than Joon-young was then. 

Min's first new mattress was in law school, after Joon-young finished his residency and got hired and had a shiny new paycheque, some money left after rent and bills and food and those damned albatrosses. He hadn't spent it on himself, but on Min. _A good student needs restful sleep_ , Joon-young said when one of his acquaintances arrived with it in his van, wrapped in a beer advertisement and smelling like melted plastic. Min still sleeps on it. After all these years and all that fucking it smells a little like Joon-young and rubber and that same plastic when he buries his nose deep into the bare surface.

He wonders what this one smells like, if it smells like anything. If Min had the chance to print his scent into hyung's bedding, would hyung like it? Would he keep it as long as he could and sleep as well as Min? Or would he wash it away, rid himself of Min and Sun-ho?

_How do you want to fuck me_? Hyun asked him, and all Min can think of is _so you remember me_.

Min doesn't know who he wants hyung to remember. But he knows he wants hyung to think of him. He wants hyung to stretch and smile to himself about it. He wants to be something that pleases him.

If Hyun wants them both equally as much, then either he doesn't want Min much at all, or he wants Sun-ho very much. Min doesn't know which he would like better.

"You've been staring at that phone for three minutes," hyung says.

Min looks up, surprised and scowling at himself for getting distracted. "I was thinking about what you asked."

The sight of hyung, naked and drinking water, light shading his thighs and throat, is overwhelmingly beautiful. Min's seen his share of handsome men. Joon-young when he was younger, before the hiring of a specific contractor to destroy his face such that a specific plastic surgeon would fix it in a specific new-face new-name way, was such a man. But hyung is special.

He tilts his head, lifting a finger off the glass and leaving a clear impression of the way it would look if he bruised Min with those same fingers. "How about this? I'll show you how I want you to fuck me."

Min's never heard of this. "How does that work? Will you touch yourself?"

"No, I tell you to do things the way I want you to do them, and you do them, and ideally we both enjoy it." Hyung's laughing at him, just a little. It pins Min's shoulders back, reminds him that however much he's aware of his severe disadvantage in bed, it's not nearly enough awareness. Not if hyung is laughing at him. 

Laughter is one thing. Curiosity is another. It stings to be laughed at, but Joon-young always says his curiosity will be his downfall one day and he is curious what it is hyung thinks is Min's and not Joon-young's. The idea that there is any difference is incredible. 

He's curious enough, in the end, to agree.

It turns out hyung lied. He's not telling. He's asking. He asks things like _I want you to kiss me right here_ and _I want you to bite me here like this_ and _I want another of your fingers_ and _I want you to fuck me like this_. They all start like that, _I want you_ , and Min is swollen with an overabundance of delight and disbelief, his head heavy with the tearing ache of his hyung saying over and again _I want you, I want you, I want you_.

He doesn't even mind that he's saying it to Sun-ho because everything in the way hyung touches him, grabs onto his hips and squeezes his thighs against Min's, everything in his bites and ferocious grip, is telling the same story, the same lie of his want, and either hyung is that comprehensive a liar, through and through, and Min can never trust him with anything ever again, or -- or. Or. Or the way hyung grins up at him, the way Min's face moves so easily to let him smile back, is a lie too. Or. Or not.

Min kneels between his legs, swallowing, his mouth too full to speak without spluttering. Hyung is gorgeous like this, open-mouthed and breathing hard, the picture of an intensely sexual man.

Hyun puts his fingers in where Min's were, three of them all at once, just like that, and he makes the sort of contented noise Min's not sure he's ever heard from anyone but hyung. Joon-young's much too controlled to curl on himself like this, let alone make the happy grunt of an antiquer winning at auction.

Min likes that it's because of him, and he puts his hand on his leg, intending to add a finger, but hyung pulls his knee up and out of Min's hand, leaning back, and he pulls out his fingers and spreads them either side. They drip with lube, a trail of it painted down the seam of his arse, and their width shows the pinkness and smallness of him.

"Can you see?" hyung asks him. He's sleepy-eyed, his toes clutching into the sheets and his flanks heaving. Min wants to fuck him. "I want you to fuck me like this."

He takes his time looking at him, every bit of him. He's fucked hyung before, of course, but never with such a blatant offer. Min likes the way hyung's invitation looks and he reaches out to push his fingers apart a little wider, the better to see between them. Hyung's chest hitches and tendons strain against Min's finger and thumb, the skin radiantly hot. But he doesn't move.

He's waiting, Min realises. Either to be fucked or for an answer. Min considers him up and down, stares at the space between their hands. "A speculum would work better."

Hyun recoils, his mouth going flat and his eyes too bright too suddenly. Min clearly said something wrong. He guessed wrong. Maybe the answer was supposed to be fucking. But hyung is still there, still with his fingers holding him open, and he's looking at Min in a way Min doesn't understand. If he said something that wrong, why is hyung just lying there and breathing?

"This isn't easy for me," hyung says. It's quiet and tired. Patient. He looks like he wants to get up, but he doesn't. He looks like he wants to move, but he doesn't. He just talks. Min would rather he were angry. "It's not easy for me to show myself like this. Don't make it harder."

Min scoffs. "How am I making it harder?" It's difficult not to whine. He doesn't understand. Hyung is the strongest person in the room, the person most able to conceal himself. Hyun goes around talking like a person and acting like person and in all the time Min's watched him, almost no-one looked at him the way they always look at Min. Min can't hide the seams where hyung gave him away and made him individual and alone. It always shows somehow.

Whether or not he's wearing clothes, whether or not he has his legs spread, whether or not he's holding himself open to be fucked, is so incidental to that solidity of him that Min can't figure out how it relates.

Hyung moves his hand after all, lets it lie sticky and loose against his stomach. He still doesn't close his knees. Min has no idea how to begin aping such a coherency of body and self, if he even could. "Let me ask you. How do you feel about me?"

It startles the breath and balance out of him and Min grabs for the bedclothes to steady himself. Hyung looks too serious for it to be a joke. But it must be. Min's said so much, he's allowed so much. He'd do anything for hyung in bed. He has done anything. He listened to him eat his breakfast at least fifty times and he never said anything about it. He'll remember, Min's sure of that, it was disgusting, but he won't say anything. He's fairly sure he won't. Doesn't hyung knows that Min is -- is -- 

How does Min feel about hyung? For him?

Too much. It's always been that he felt too much. But back then he didn't know better and after that it didn't matter. Does it matter now? Can it? Min doubts that. There are too many things in the way. 

But there's nothing in the way of them right now. It's just him and hyung. And everything else, and Joon-young, but at the forefront in this bed it's the two of them again.

"A special person. It's like that."

"A special person," Hyun says. "Like your non-exclusive?"

Min thinks he understands the question. It's the same one he's asked himself. _Are we to each other as Joon-young is to me?_

The answer once someone else asks it for him is immediate and obvious. "Not at all."

In this they are apart. Of course they are apart. Joon-young is to Min as he is. Hyung is to Min as he is. And Min is to them as -- as -- it's not a them anymore. It feels like a category error to think of Joon-young and hyung as a them, as though they can be treated identically, as though they are the same. They're not. Min knows it more deeply the more he thinks of it. They are not the same and Min, too, isn't the same to them either.

He didn't realise. He thought it was just being Sun-ho to one and Min to another, but it's deeper than that now. For whatever reason, with hyung Sun-ho feels true, the way Min is someone with Joon-young.

Joon-young is necessary to Min, and hyung is -- to Sun-ho and Min both hyung is --

Min doesn't know how to ask. He gestures between them. "What would you call this?"

"Important," hyung says very quietly. 

Min shakes his head, though hearing that softens some of the racing in his head, reminds him that hyung is still so naked and hard and Min is too. "What would you _call_ it?"

"A relationship," hyung says. It's almost a sigh. "If I were younger I would say you were my boyfriend. If we lived in the same country I would have asked you to move in with me months ago. Do you really not know that I like you?"

"How can you not know?" Min snaps back.

Hyung's mouth twists. "If your non-exclusive did this, if he held himself open to you, would you have looked at him asking you to fuck him and told him it would be better with a speculum?" 

Min knows, immediately and without doubt, that he wouldn't have. It must show on his face, and Hyun groans, knees slumping. 

"Sometimes I really wonder if you hate me," hyung says, his arm over his face. "I understand emotional availability isn't your skill, but I wonder if it's not that you're bad at it, but that you don't want to give me what you do have. If you hate me."

It sounds painful, eked out again. Min both enjoys it and feels a strange, quailing sensation, an urge to touch him and coax him into some other mood. He's felt it before and when he asked Joon-young called it shame and looked at him like he was some sort of marvellous artifact.

He doesn't think Hyun would look at him like that if Min told him.

"I used to," Min says.

Hyung lifts his arm off his face and peers at him over his nose, something terrible in his face.

Min rushes on before he can say anything. "I used to. Not so much now. It was an accident that I hurt you. I thought you were asking literally."

"But enough," hyung says, still looking at him, "that it's pleasurable to you to hurt me. By accident or not."

Min doesn't want to lie to him, still doesn't like lying to him. "Yes."

"I don't trust you enough to try again. I don't know that I want to." Hyung rolls onto his side, his face so grave and his shoulders so slumped, and Min feels like he went too far this time, somehow.

"If I promise I'll do it right this time, would it help?" he ventures. He's not sure what good his word is to anyone, but if hyung thinks he can keep a promise Min will do his best.

Hyung looks over at him. "If you can keep it," he says. "If you can't, don't bother."

"I can." Min's fairly sure he can. It means getting to fuck hyung. There's a lot he'll do for that. 

There's a long moment.

"All right." Hyun rolls onto his back again and Min helps him shift the cushions back under his hips, pulls a glove out of hyung's supply box on the nightstand and checks him. Still loose, still warm. His cock's softened a little, and Min wonders if he should suck him off, if he should do something to make him hard again. He backs off when hyung pushes at his hand, watches him put his bare fingers inside himself, three and then four.

Hyung's tense, his belly taut and the tendons in his thighs standing out, and he's so wary of Min that Min wants to cringe and sulk that he didn't do it. But he did. He hurt him, he can hurt him, and he did hurt him. Even if it wasn't on purpose.

He watches him, sees the moment hyung swallows and puts back his shoulders and decides to trust him, how he pulls up his legs and lies back, his fingers slipping out. Min's very sure he's not worth this. He can't possibly be worth this to Hyun.

"Sun-ho." He hesitates, fingers curling against his thigh, and straightens them, puts two either side, and spreads. "I want you to fuck me."

"Yes," Min tells him, tells him what he should have said before, what he wishes he said. He should have just shut up and fucked him. He should have listened to that invitation and not the easy distance. It's hard to hear that hyung wants him. But it's what Min wants too, isn't it? For Hyun to want him?

"Have me, then." Min looks up from rolling on the condom, studies the jump of his chin, the way he breathes through his nose, and wonders if hyung is nervous. Is he nervous that Min doesn't want him too? But that would be stupid.

A little more lube to both of them and Min walks on his knees to put his body against his, hyung spreading his legs, and when he leans up to kiss him before he puts in his cock Hyun's lips are stiff and shut.

Min hesitates, puzzled. Hyung's legs are tight around his hips, his heels encouraging and firmly pressed. But his arms are lax, his shoulders slack too, and from the waist up it looks like he's just in a bed and not being fucked. His cock is against hyung, pressing in and he's keeping the promise, but hyung isn't kissing him back.

He likes the part where he kisses him as he feeds his cock into him and hyung's mouth opens against his in a pant and his arms come up to grip his shoulders. But he's halfway in and none of that looks like it's about to happen.

"I don't know what you want me to do," Min tells him.

Hyung looks at him. "You know what I want you to do."

Min makes a frustrated noise. It's that or throw something. "You're not acting like it."

Hyung sighs and puts a hand against Min's chest. "This is what is bothering me. What you said," hyung says softly, "is something he -- your nonexclusive -- would have said. Isn't it? He would have said that to you."

Min shrugs. "It's true. A speculum does work better if you want to look inside."

Hyung's mouth does something strange, pulling back over his teeth, then closing again in tiny wobbles of effort. "Sun-ho. I didn't want you to look inside at a piece of anatomy. I wanted you to look at me. The man who wants you. When I asked if you saw, I meant I wanted you to see how much I wanted you. I wanted to be appreciated. Maybe that was foolish."

"I do," Min protests. "I do like it." He reaches to stroke hyung's cock, finding it soft even though Min's inside him and feeling an odd ache, some sort of desire to cover hyung somehow, to put a blanket on him and turn off the lights the way Joon-young does when Min goes to bed. "I like you. I like it."

"When he said that to you," hyung says, sounding like a prosecutor trying to find an angle in on Min's defense, "did you feel like that? Like I do? Do you understand me?"

Min would say _he didn't say that_ , but Joon-young has. Joon-young's always been a student of anatomy and Min a willing example. He'd told Min afterwards, steel holding him open and his gloved hand on his thigh, that he wanted to know what it was that was so fascinating to his male relatives. He'd sounded disappointed, looking inside him, and told him it must be psychological.

Min said to him then that maybe they just wanted to fuck him, and that was the second time he was afraid of Joon-young.

"I don't understand your feelings," Min admits. "It wasn't like that. I told you. The two of you are different."

Hyung nods. "Then, do you understand that I like it when you want me? Not to look at as an object like a table, but as a person of sexual interest?"

"Of course," Min says emphatically. That divide he knows almost instinctively. It's the difference between the way Joon-young thinks of being fucked and the way Min feels when Joon-young fucks him. "I did. I do. You're …" 

He's still inside him, and he's not unused to having conversations about other things in the middle of sex, but talking like this while he's inside him feels like he's doing something wrong. Fucking hyung shouldn't feel wrong. 

"You should make up your mind whether you want me to fuck you," he mutters. "You're killing the mood."

"You killed it first, you beautiful ingrate." Hyun huffs, a smile turning the corners of his mouth. "It does feel good. And I do feel better for talking. I'm not finished, but it can wait. So. Shall we fix the mood?"

Hyun reaches for him, reaches up Min's arms, hands going to his shoulders and drawing him down, his heels digging in and drawing him close, and Min relaxes. This is more like how hyung should be. "Beautiful?"

"Superlatively," hyung says, and laughs against his mouth, his kiss open and warm, and he pants and shuts his eyes when Min thrusts back into him.

Even after all that chatter and nonsense, he wants Min like this, in this moment, and Min desperately wants to believe him again. He wants to believe that hyung is having these conversations with him not only to test the extent of Min's deficiencies but because he thinks Min has a chance to make them up if he knows what they are. He wants to believe hyung truly is giving him another chance. 

It feels like it. It looks like it. It sounds like it, and if anyone's superlatively beautiful in bed, it's Hyun. Min stares shamelessly, banking on the idea that hyung wanted Min to watch him, and it makes hyung smile so crooked and prettily that Min pushes up his knees and finds a good angle to kiss him as deeply as he wants to.

Min didn't know it, but he's forgiven hyung, and he tells him so, bracing himself on the bed when hyung tells him he's forgiven him too. 

A relationship between Lee Hyun and Jung Sun-ho. Min pretends, for an hour or three, that it's possible.

***

There are no petals on the front stoop when Min gets back, sunset still gleaming faintly in the sky. He adjusts himself into Min as he loosens his tie in the entryway, shuts all thought of hyung away.

He finds Joon-young in the kitchen, drinking tea, a set of playing cards spread in a game of solitaire. "Ah, you're home." He puts down his cup and pours another. "Remember to take off your shoes."

Min goes back to the entryway, kicks them over to Joon-young's tidy sneakers and joins him. The tea is hot. Joon-young must have made a second pot or just come in. 

"Did you forget? Perhaps it was like that. You allowed yourself to forget a useful person." Joon-young sips tea. There's a rope burn on the side of his hand. "I wonder, are you ungrateful? Incapable?" He sips again, shuffles cards, taps them into crisp alignment. "I don't recall that you are incapable."

"I'm sorry, uncle," Min says. "I did forget."

"You made a lot of trouble for me today." Joon-young sets the shuffled cards aside. "It's not like you."

Min hesitates. Joon-young is furious. But he never asks Min a question he doesn't want an answer to, and Min still doesn't know what hyung wants from him in his wanting, in the things he says. Some of it he does. But not all. "If someone says they are obligated to another person the same as a sibling, what does it mean?"

Joon-young pauses. "Closeness, I think. It seems that way. Siblings are a firm relationship. Like you and your hyung, to say one relationship is as firm as another. It's a comparison."

"Are we obligated like that?"

Min thought about it while driving home, all traces of hyung scrubbed away. If hyung thinks he can be as obligated to Jung Sun-ho as he is to Min, if he thinks that really is possible, then is that what Joon-young is to Min?

"Do you think we are?" Joon-young puts down his cup. "I think we are close."

"I think so too." Min fidgets with his saucer, turning it round and round on the spot in squeaky increments. "I am grateful to you, uncle. Was it difficult?"

"More notice would have been helpful. But I think it will still be a good puzzle for your hyung. Are you looking forward to meeting him?"

"Yes. Have you?"

"I think I will tomorrow." Joon-young opens a packet of biscuits and puts three on Min's saucer. "Not in the morning. There will be time for a little gardening. Who said that about siblings?"

"Another attorney." Min doesn't have to pretend discomfort. He didn't know Joon-young has a garden now. He must have moved and put the latest albatross into someone else's care. Probably Ja-hee. "They thought I was unwell and took me home. We talked."

"Did they? Friends are very good for workplace relations." Joon-young breaks his one biscuit in half and gives Min the other. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yes, but I'll go to sleep early. Uncle, if you lose someone, is it possible to replace them?"

Joon-young puts his hand to Min's forehead. "You do feel clammy. Make sure you close your window." He focuses again on Min's eyes, leaning close. "What was it then, if not ingratitude? Asking me to deal with him for you."

Min knows what the real question is. He knows. 

He knows the only answer is hyung.

"I'm not ungrateful, uncle." He rises and presses up against Joon-young, trailing his fingers over his shirt and beginning to unbutton it. "If I go to bed early, will you let me show you?"

"When will you sleep?" He smiles. "People should sleep when they are unwell."

"We could start now," Min says. He pushes Joon-young's cup out of reach and leans back against the table, spreading his legs, offering himself. "I would have enough time then."

Joon-young gives him one of those looks that make Min feel pinned and shut-in and important. "What are you making up for?"

"You said yourself. I made a lot of trouble for you today," Min suggests.

"You don't desire me that much," Joon-young says.

Min smiles. "Ah, I don't? I must have a lot of imagination then."

"Min," Joon-young says. "You know you won't get what you want."

"Why not?" Min steps closer, sliding his hands inside Joon-young's jacket, his shirt ruching against his palms, and Min spreads it to show skin and hair and the old strength of his chest. "You're here." 

Min knows better. He knows much better than this. It won't end well. But he feels reckless, thwarted and desperate, and if Joon-young wants to speak of obvious things and goad him then fine, Min will too. He will too. He leans in close to his blank face, smiling, and tries to imitate the voices he's heard of girls flirting with older men. 

"Uncle. Sexy Uncle, I'm all wet for you. Pretty please fuck me?"

Joon-young's hand snakes up the back of his neck and grabs his hair, and Min has a moment of comprehending what is about to happen before his face in engulfed in dirty dishwater, thick with pieces that float in and out of his mouth and soap that stings his eyes. Struggle is futile. Joon-young's fist is heavy and the edge of the sink is pressed so hard and cold into his throat that his knees sag from under him nevertheless.

Min gags as Joon-young lowers him to the floor, places his head into the bin, and gently lets the lid close on his head. It's foul and disgusting in there, three days' worth of trash, and Min gags again, trapped with the smell of it all and unwilling to move out from under Joon-young's hand calm and heavy on the back of his neck.

"You shouldn't have done that, Min," Joon-young says kindly, echoing oddly under the metal lid. "We will have to talk now. Isn't that what you didn't want to happen?"

Min retches, bile flooding up his nose with searing pain and burning his lips when he tries to hold it in, and he chokes. "Yes," he admits once he can speak again, stomach lurching. "Yes. I wanted to avoid that. Uncle --"

"You should know better," Joon-young chides. "Shouldn't you?"

"Yes," Min says. "This is disgusting, uncle."

"So were you." Joon-young pats his shoulder. "You should wash. You don't smell very good. I'll make tea and clean this up. It is also your mess, but I am in a forgiving mood."

Min knows. That Joon-young does so little to respond to such a large provocation is one of the ways in which Min is very special indeed. He knows.

"Thank you," Min says. He is special to Joon-young. His father never bothered like this, because Min wasn't special like hyung. But Joon-young always bothers. 

It burns, all of it, and he showers and rinses his shirt in the sink and washes his face and hair three times. His sinuses feel raw and tender and throbbing, his throat abjectly sore. 

He doesn't know what to do, how to save Sun-ho, how to stop Joon-young from telling hyung who he is. Or how to stop hyung from letting on. He can't text him now to tell him; it'll only make hyung suspicious. He has to hope hyung will remember and tell him about it. He has to put faith in him, faith that he'll remember Sun-ho's discomfort and value it, and it's been so long since he's had to trust him for anything truly important.

Too, there's Joon-young. He knows Hyun as well as Min does, if not better. He will see him tomorrow and he will _know_ and Min doesn't know what he'll do with the knowledge.

It's his own fault. He handed hyung to Joon-young and he's handed himself in alongside. He did this.

Joon-young must know Min is hiding something. 

But when Min comes back in fresh clothes and wet hair Joon-young only puts a cup of tea in front of him. "I won't have to do that again, right?"

Hyung would have laughed, Min thinks. There's a good chance. He would have been disgusted too, but he might have laughed. Min wonders if he forgot who he was talking to. He wonders if it is wrong after all to miss hyung to Joon-young's face.

Min sips. Lemon. Sometimes they're very alike too, he and Joon-young. He forces himself to swallow. "No, uncle."

Joon-young looks at him over the rim of his teacup. "I'm not so sure." He sets it down. "I think the next lesson will teach you not to ignore your responsibilities."

He gets up and leaves, citrus heavy in the air, not bothering to touch Min at all, and Min chokes down the rest of his cup, dread weighing his tongue.

***

There's no-one, really, to speak to about any of it. Hyung is impossible. Joon-young is impossible.

That leaves no-one.

But there's a stack of folders on his desk when he drives to work the next morning, topped with a messy _free range murderers inside! :) :)_ post-it from Chun-seok, and Min remembers how he'd snapped for Min to move his hand, how he'd refused to entertain even that slightest risk of hurting him.

He puts the topmost folder under his arm and goes to his desk. "Come on."

"Ah?" Chun-seok finishes signing an email _xoxoxoxo baby!!!_ and gets up. "Should I get coffee?"

"I'll get it," Min says.

"You asshole, you moved it!"

"Did I?" Min says, smiling, deliberately ponderous.

He did move it. The head secretary and he have an arrangement. They control who gets the coffee and in turn they trade prosecutorial access. It works very well.

"Asshole," Chun-seok says, as though it's newsworthy, and gets up. "I'll meet you in the stairwell."

Min gets coffee and brings it to him, the folder crinkling against his elbow and his shoes ringing loudly on the steps. 

Chun-seok's lounging against the railing painted their floor colour, burping, and he takes the one Min hands him and drinks deeply.

No questioning. No testing. He just gulps it down. It's both disgusting and somehow gratifying, a puzzled wonder curling in his stomach at this creature who somehow doesn't want to hurt him despite the fact that Min hasn't earned that kind of reluctance.

How are people like this? How can Chun-seok just drink that?

"What's up? Is this about yesterday?"

Min shifts the folder to his other arm. Was it only yesterday? It feels like forever. "Thank you for driving me. You didn't have to."

_Why are you like this?_ is what he wants to say. _How? Why me? What did I do right?_

"Oh, of course. Don't worry about it."

There's a strange little buzz in the back of Min's head. _Oh, of course. Oh, of course_ , looping like flies around his ears. _Oh, of course_. 

"Is that all? Jesus. I thought it was serious with the good coffee and the stairs and all! You shouldn't scare me like this!"

"Why would it?" Min asks him. Chun-seok is such a normal person with stupid little normal feelings and stupid normal social skills. Maybe he can tell Min what the other two can't or won't. "Why would it scare you? Why is that 'of course'?"

Chun-seok sighs, one of the patronising noises that make Min's sense for danger twitch. "Ah, you must have had a very hard day."

This he can admit. "I did."

"Then, do you trust me a little, Sun-ho?"

"Sometimes," Min says warily.

"Will you bite me and get me demoted to file clerk if I touch you?"

Min can't say he wouldn't. "It depends."

Chun-seok nods and puts his coffee down on one of the steps. "Okay, hold on a moment and be still. This is a one-time thing."

He steps closer, arms spreading, and Min has a moment of wondering before Chun-seok's arms close around his body, one against his back and the other at his waist, a strange, giving sort of embrace, his shoulders tilted and his body pressed to Min's. 

He can compare this to three others. Hyung is a solid man, what fat he has a sleekness atop muscle and heartiness. Joon-young is lean, every adhesion of muscle to bone striated by starvation and labour. Touching him is much as a reminder of the things he gave Min, a reminder of his better character, his forgiveness and sufferance, as it is a need.

The only woman he has embraced, Ja-hee, was when she left in the rain with the things Joon-young gave her. She had the wide-angled shoulders of a weightlifter, her back bunched with violence and her arms banded unforgiving around his waist.

Chun-seok, though, is a round man of round shapes, from hair to cheeks to neck, his arms soft and his belly a mound straining his shirts, his tie perching atop it when he stretches back in his chair after lunch. He is much shorter than Min, his breath puffing out of his nose onto Min's collar, and his body yields in a way Min doesn't understand. When he puts his hand on his back it sinks a little, the crook of his elbow fitting into his soft side in a way he didn't expect, and it's like he's holding something vulnerable too.

He's not sure he likes it. 

"It's of course and why and all that because I'm not a jerk like you, I'm a good citizen and good citizens don't make it worse for upset people." Chun-seok pats his back slowly. "They drive them home. Not make fun of them. It's not fun for me when you're miserable. Unlike you, you asshole. Got it?" Chun-seok squeezes him. His arms are laughably weak. "Anyway, it will be all right."

"You don't know that," Min says.

"Come on," Chun-seok snorts, and he slaps Min's back, the sort of open-handed violence meant as encouragement he's seen among other colleagues, and then he's stepping back. 

Min bites down the urge to ask him to stop, to stay, to let Min figure out what it was that made his touch so new and strange.

"It'll be all right because you'll make it all right, Sun-ho," Chun-seok says, laughing as though faith in Min is obvious. "What was it? Girlfriend break up with you?"

"No," Min says. And then -- then, because Chun-seok has refused to hurt him all this time, because Chun-seok held him, because Chun-seok saw him and thought he was worth protecting like a person, because Chun-seok hasn't once stopped speaking to him even though he calls him the worst asshole in Korea, because Chun-seok once took a case with a man murdering the man who abused him and said _this is obviously a domestic, they weren't just friends, don't be ridiculous_ and won it with an argument that every citizen deserved the dignity of respect -- "No, and it's a man."

"Sun-ho," Chun-seok says, face falling to seriousness, and he grips Min's arms. "Don't be so loud. Don't give me your career like that. Don't fucking make me responsible, you heard me? I didn't hear that, Sun-ho. I didn't fucking hear that. You _asshole_." He exhales, mint gum rising sharp in Min's nose. But there's no disgust in him. 

There's none of the suspicion Min's used to picking apart from the general suspicion of his motives as a defense lawyer, edged with just that shade of violence. There's none of the withholding Min's used to, the reticience that says _I'll decide when you're human when you prove you're worth it_. 

It's just Chun-seok with his round cheeks and his whole-face scowl. "It's good you stopped fighting with your girlfriend," sharp and pointed, and he looks toward the stairs below them, and above, his point so obviously and crudely made that Min struggles not to roll his eyes. "But it's not good to let it take your day like that."

Even this is an attempt to protect him from hurt, isn't it? Even this. "It was a very bad fight," Min offers, truth playing along with the lie.

"You're that kind of person," Chun-seok says, and he narrows his eyes at Min, lays his hands flat against his chest, moves them to brush off his shoulders. He's seen people approve of their children this way. He's seen daughters rise on their toes to brush their fathers' shoulders this way in court and at memorials. "You're that kind of asshole. I know. You'll asshole through it."

"You have a lot of confidence in me," Min whispers. It's all he can say. He never thought, never expected, to find someone who would volunteer to help him like this. Who would care in the slightest for his career and not having one over his head. He can tell already. Chun-seok will try to forget what Min said, and he won't use it, in case he remembers it again. He won't do that. The same way he didn't crush his hand in the window of his ugly car.

Min doesn't understand people like this. He never has. 

Chun-seok clears his throat. "That one of the ones I pulled for you?" He picks up his coffee again. "I asked Attorney Jang for the most complicated cases. I know you don't like the boring stuff."

It's all such a transparent attempt at being kind to him that it takes Min a shamefully long time to collect himself into Jung Sun-ho, attorney asshole. His ears are still ringing.

He's so stupid and vulnerable and _annoying_ and Min just wants to knock the coffee over, knock Chun-seok down the stairs, wants to get rid of him and the way he grins and whines and complains and this confidence he didn't know he was earning. He wants Chun-seok to come close again and let him figure out what that feeling was. He wants Chun-seok to tell him again that his effort is worth protecting, even from their fellows whom Min thought were aligned much more with Chun-seok than Min. 

"That was prudent," he says instead of everything else, trying not to let the choke in his throat overwhelm him. 

He still doesn't know what he did right, but surely it isn't wrong to want more of it. More of his refusal to hurt Min, more of his confidence. It's different again from hyung and Joon-young. Something that belongs to Sun-ho and Sun-ho alone. _How did I get this? How can I not lose it?_ He wants to ask him so many questions. 

"How about lunch?" He shakes the folder. "We can discuss it."

"I want credit," Chun-seok says promptly. 

He wouldn't be in this department, or their cohort, if he weren't venal and greedy too. Indulging him is easy enough. Min can write in a line or two about his aid and Chun-seok will owe him later. "Done."

"Okay, see you then." Chun-seok lifts his coffee in salute. "Asshole, fighting!"

Today hyung meets Joon-young again. And still, the way Chun-seok says it, the way Chun-seok held him like -- like -- like parents hold their children, like hyung held him when they were both very young, Min almost believes there could be hope all this will end well.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter! Already working on the next, but no idea when it'll be up. 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: mention of canonical animal harm, mentions of severe physical (and heavily implied to be sexual) childhood abuse.

Today Joon-young and hyung meet again and there is nothing he can do.

Min starts his day by clearing up his case backend in the department intranet with a certain sense of fatalism. Moving witness statements to the correct date folders and arranging paralegal tags to point to the right citations feels very, very unimportant. It's a waste of time he thought he left behind after probation. But it makes the prosecutors happy, everything else necessary is phone calls, and if something happens Min should be ready to answer. Min shouldn't be distracted by things that are supposed to matter to normal people, like cases and the way Chun-seok keeps coming by to pester him.

It's a tightness in his chest, a dragging inability to breathe deeply, and he sips tea and goes over and over the possible sequences of events. Perhaps they are both called to the site. Perhaps Joon-young is called first and Hyun is tasked with the case by police later and they meet then. Perhaps Hyun's foster mother calls him in right away or someone else does. Perhaps Joon-young suggests Hyun to the police force.

And then, however it happens, Joon-young will be alone in a room with hyung. And Hyun will be alone with him.

Min doesn't know anything after that. He can't predict either of them. He doesn't know who to trust the least.

He contemplates losing both of them today, just like that, without even being there to witness it. He contemplates what hyung might bother to say to him, if anything. Joon-young will just disappear. He might leave something to him, some uncomplicated assets or the house of his mother's body, but he won't bother saying anything to Min if hyung chooses him. Min won't be important enough for that.

It keeps trying to claw up his throat. The uncertainty. A whimper as pathetic as the child Joon-young once was. He doesn't want this to happen. He did this to himself but he doesn't want it.

By lunchtime he should know. Late lunch at least. He can't picture Joon-young allowing them to involve hyung later than that.

He doesn't expect to be startled out of concentration by a text alert, and he flips his phone over.

_Your uncle is head medical examiner Lee Joon-ho, correct? I had tea with him this morning._

No. No. That can't be right. There's nothing new from Joon-young on his phone. No texts or calls.

Joon-young would have told him if he approached hyung. He _did_ tell him. It was meant to be at work, as a medical examiner. It was meant to be like that. Not just deciding to have tea with hyung somehow. How do they know each other well enough? What has hyung not been telling him?

_He is. How?_

_He lives next door_. _Did you know?_

Min curls forward over his keyboard, his forehead so close to his monitor he can feel the buzz of it against his skin.

Is that why he has a garden now? Because he decided to take a house nearby? He has a _house_ and he didn't tell Min. He has a house next to hyung and he didn't tell Min.

He met him and he didn't tell Min. He did all that to meet hyung, didn't he? And he didn't tell him.

Min texts Ja-hee. If Joon-young dumped the albatross on her and bought the house, or bought it and dumped it on her, surely she'd know. _Question_.

 _ok bro_ , she replies immediately. Must be slow at the prison. He can't remember if it's her day off and he can't be bothered trying to remember.

_Where's the old man's house?_

She replies with the address of the house on the block adjacent, its front door also painted red. He used to confuse the two until hyung taught him to read numbers. _didnt u kno?_

 _No_ , he texts her. Texts both of them. He didn't know. It's all he can do. He squeezes his eyes shut and feels the shudder of it crawl from one shoulder to another across his body like the sweep of a branch.

Joon-young would have told him. He would have. Wouldn't he?

Hyung beside Joon-young, and Joon-young can have him whenever he wants. Joon-young will have him.

 _Can you talk?_ Hyun replies.

Min's mouth waters as much as his eyes. He feels loose-jointed and overbalanced and sick. Somehow he manages to lock his desktop and rise and go outside without letting on that his pieces are all coming apart into some unnamed mess.

Why didn't Joon-young tell him?

 _I can now_ , Min texts, forcing his fingers to stop shaking long enough, and he flinches when the screen immediately flips to an incoming call.

He manages to answer it. He manages to hold the phone to his ear and approximate something like a pattern to his breathing.

Joon-young tells him everything. Most things. He tells him important things. This has to be important. Surely important enough to tell Min. Joon-young didn't tell him.

Since when? How long?

"Your breathing doesn't sound good," hyung says. "Are you okay?"

"I didn't know," Min whispers. Min must not have been worth telling. He's not even good enough to pretend he's fine to hyung over a phone line. But he doesn't know what he did to make it so Joon-young didn't tell him. What did he do? Joon-young tells him the important things. He always tells him the important things.

"You're afraid." Hyun's voice changes. "Are you afraid of him finding out?"

"It's… not that," he manages, exhaling. "It's not all that."

"If you're worried I told him about us," Hyun says, "I didn't. I didn't say anything. If he knows it's nothing I said or did. I didn't say anything about you either. He said all of his children were overseas, though."

Min blinks away tears. Overseas. That is the standard lie, yes, but Min fucked it up, and now -- and now, this is Min's fault. Min must not be worth telling. But why? This is hyung, he's _Min's_ , Joon-young doesn't have the _right_ to keep this from him. "What else did he say?"

There's something very sharp in his voice. "You really are scared. What's wrong?"

"What else did he _say_?" Min snaps. "Tell me now."

Hyung grunts into the phone. "That he was a bit like a doctor and my neighbour. We met when he sprayed me with a hose," scoffing, "and he invited me in as an apology. We changed shirts, had tea, we talked about gardening. I asked what sort of doctor and he told me his profession. What are you so afraid of, Sun-ho?"

 _Changed shirts_. Min grips the railing, hard, hot metal soothing against his palm. His hands feel huge and clammy. The idea of hyung nude even that much in the same room as Joon-young makes him want to kill someone. Hyung. Everyone in the office who uses tildes as an excuse for a full stop. Tear up this rail and drive it through Chun-seok's skull.

Maybe it was just tea.

"He doesn't know," Min mumbles. "He can't know. He wouldn't approve."

That's the least of it. Joon-young has personal and particular opinions about incest.

"If he finds out it won't be because of me," hyung says. It sounds like he's trying to be comforting. Like this is something that Min can be comforted _about_ , and it's so naive, so unknowing that Min wants to scream at him for ruining his life and putting him in this position.

He breathes deeply, his hand shaking, and switches his phone to the other lest he drop it. "He was raised in a strict Catholic family. He has opinions." It sticks in his throat. Yes. _Opinions_. Opinions that hyung, being a normal person who grew up a normal person, will agree with and Min will be the one hyung hates.

"Ah. I understand." Hyun clears his throat. "That must be difficult. Do you need me to promise that I won't tell him? It's fine." He's being so _gentle_.

Min wants to tell him that's not the point. That he doesn't understand. That there is nothing any of them can do.

Joon-young didn't tell him. What else is there? How can he possibly not have _told Min_?

"You're his type," Min says. "He was raised that way, but you're his type."

Hyung makes a startled noise. "You're worried for me. Aren't you? It's not you that has you so scared, but me. Sun-ho, I'll ask you again. Why are you afraid of him?"

"It would hurt his pride," Min says, mouth numb with the truth of it, "that I had you first."

"Have," Hyun corrects. "Sometimes the way you talk -- I am not a possession to be taken. You have me and you will. Because I am a person who chooses you. You should remember that." He tsks. "I have another call. Excuse me."

Min's head spins. _A person who chooses you_. That doesn't help. If anything it's worse. Joon-young is so, so good at turning choices into fate. That is what it is, isn't it? That is the crux of the lie by omission. Min thought it was all fate because -- because Joon-young lied. To him.

He's not supposed to lie to Min like this and Min doesn't know what to do.

It's not long before hyung exhales into the phone. "The police these days. They asked for a consult."

"Do you have anything better to do?" If Joon-young goes this far, then perhaps it would be better to have it over with. Perhaps it would be better to strip himself to bone, all at once, and offer himself to all and sundry in pieces of Sun-ho and Min and hyung's absences. He could call it art.

"Fold all of my napkins into animal shapes," hyung says promptly.

Min doesn't smile. He knows he should find it funny, but all he has is the shrinking horror of Joon-young _not telling him_. What else? There must be other things. There are always other things when it comes to Joon-young. "You'll die of boredom."

"I'll think about it," hyung says. "Anything else I should know about your uncle?"

 _Get away from him. Don't listen to him. Don't go near him. Don't let him touch you._ "He's as smart as you are and suffers fools even less."

"Noted," Hyun says slowly. "I got the impression there was a lot more to him than the facade."

He's surprised. "There is. You saw that?"

"I saw you too, Sun-ho." Hyung laughs. "I'm not interested in understanding him, don't worry. My hands are full."

 _You'll want him when you know_ , Min wants to say. "Still, I won't visit."

"That's fine. The house has to be aired out before it's fit for habitation anyhow. Eighteen years is a little too much dust even for my cleaning hobby. I'll be in the same room tonight. Will you come?"

Ja-hee's text makes him stop in his tracks, words dying in his mouth. _r u sure ur still his fav_

Min isn't. Min isn't sure at all. But if he isn't his favourite, he knows who Joon-young would prefer.

"Sun-ho?"

"Yes. I'll come."

If hyung will still want him after Joon-young's done.

***

Taking a call from a police task force, courtesy one Choi Eun-bok and Seung-hoon's vaunted father's vaunted connections, is anticlimactic. He's seen Eun-bok cry while Joon-young helped him defecate. Eun-bok's the only one alive who's seen Min having sex with Joon-young. Min knows him intimately enough to never bother thinking about him again.

"This is about an investigation into Yang Seun-hoon by our task force," Eun-book says. "Do you know he was found dead?"

Min inhales and lies, because this is a police call and it is of course recorded, and every word he says to Eun-bok will be relayed to Joon-young. It is not very hard to fake being affected. He is affected enough by other things as it is. "No. I -- no. He's dead?"

"Yes, it's been confirmed by the authorities. I'm sorry about your brother," Eun-bok says. "You were half-brothers, right? Through your mother's side."

Joon-young used to say Eun-bok was talented. Min's beginning to understand why, now that he is an adult and can appreciate him. It's very easy to be calm with him. Even knowing what he's doing with his voice doesn't stop it from helping. "Yes. Thank you. It was complicated, but..."

"You're the last number he called. From the records I can see you didn't act as his lawyer, so I assume this is your personal number?"

"Yes, he called me either yesterday or the day before," calculating how much vagueness he can get away with, how much is enough to sell the distance. "It wasn't a long call."

"And how did he seem to you?"

"He was drunk and upset about something but he didn't explain. He just rambled and hung up." Min sighs. "I've been a little worried but I didn't expect this. Poor hyung. He's really dead?"

Eun-bok is a steady presence on the line, his breath rhythmic and precise. Joon-young liked that about him. Even with how often he sobbed in the long months of reconstructive surgeries it was tearless and silent most of the time. "I'm sorry for your loss. I still have a few more questions for you right now. There's no reason you can think of that anyone would hold a grudge?"

 _No reason like yours_ , Min wants to say. Min remembers watching Eun-bok cry loudly only once, sprawled in the bath, his colostomy bag between his knees, bare stoma twitching and his scars shuddering. He'd glued his fingers together and somehow that was the last crack in his composure. He asked for the bottle of remover and Min told him to beg for it. Eun-bok did.

Of course, he also told on Min when Joon-young came home from work and Joon-young found Min and slapped him for it.

"Seung-hoon had some difficulties with his executives," Min says. "He drank on other people's tabs sometimes. But that's hardly criminal, let alone worth murder. I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help, Detective Choi."

"Thank you for your time, Attorney Jung. Did you know about Kang Ji-seo, by any chance?"

That's a Joon-young trick, that one. "Ah, his girlfriend? He loved her very much."

Eun-bok makes a thoughtful, unfooled noise. Likely he clocked Seung-hoon's exact personality as soon as he saw his body. Seung-hoon might have _thought_ he loved her, but how he showed it -- those twists are something Eun-bok knows better than Min. "Well, I won't take more of your time. Please be available for further questions as necessary, Attorney Jung."

"When necessary," Min says. "I am a lawyer who understands the rules of evidence, Detective Choi."

"Of course you are. My condolences." Eun-bok hangs up with a delicate little click and leaves Min torn between admiration and contempt.

***

Lunch with Chun-seok and the extra cases invariably turns to talking about Chun-seok's ongoing battle with the Chairman Kim case. Min's assisted him with writeups and timelines, but the main part of his help is pretending to listen to him whine.

Not that he doesn't have cause to whine.

It was, once upon a time, not an important case. Something loose and easy, a spot of embezzlement. Nothing terribly untoward. But Min was drawn into part-timing on it and it grew into a larger, more complex case of shell companies and double dealings and insider trading, and in the end all they had to defend Chairman Kim was his meticulous lack of records and his self-avowed character.

More than enough to win in a white-collar case like this where the public harms were obtuse and difficult to explain, but only if they have a witness to said character.

Min pauses in the middle of altering a citation.

Kang Ji-seo. Seung-hoon's girlfriend and that crucial character witness for Chairman Kim and Chun-seok's defense style. Now dead along with the case and quite possibly Chun-seok's career. Min didn't think about that. He forgot. No, the truth: he didn't care.

He looks up at Chun-seok's floridly furrowed brows, the way he nods at Kang Ji-seo's picture every time it comes up as though he trusts her in absence, and a knot tightens in his belly.

It's so clear Chun-seok doesn't know yet, and Min is in no position to tell him.

"You need to check the disagreements," Min says, wetting his mouth with a stolen sip or five of Chun-seok's coffee and ignoring his protests. "Set up more discredits. Prosecutor Ha likes to quibble numbers."

Chun-seok complains under his breath about him being an asshole who does things like _discredits_ instead of good old-fashioned lawyering -- Min would counter that discrediting witnesses is exactly old-fashioned lawyering -- but digs through papers for the keyboard plugged into the department's laptop.

Min swallows hard. He should have at least _realised_ that if he owes Chun-seok, which is debatable, but if he does, then this is a poor way to repay him. This is poor behaviour. Joon-young already didn't approve of unsponsored ties but this he would like even less.

"We should at least try," Min tells him, and searches through the papers, rifling past his own colourful tabs and sprawling hangul. He's been assisting Chun-seok on this a lot, over the last year or so; his system is everywhere, sticky tabs brushing his fingers, and it's not difficult to pull out the ones marked yellow for witness statements. For this they also need the police statements, marked blue, letters from Chairman Kim's friends, marked red for character support, and even with all this profusion of colour that Chairman Kim has so generously provided, all of Chun-seok's careful tabulations, Chun-seok can't do it.

Chun-seok can't do it without Kang Ji-seo. If he tries to lead this defense without her he'll lose the case in the first half-hour and nothing short of an earthquake or significant bribery will win Chairman Kim a positive verdict.

Min fetches another round of coffee without complaint and adds a slice of cake for Chun-seok too. It's the done thing, cake for consolation. Even though Chun-seok doesn't know yet, he will, and then -- and then it will be Min's case. Min will take it from him.

He might as well start treating it as his own from now on, and he digs into the red-tabbed files, handing Chun-seok the others.

Min's not very surprised when he looks up and his tea is empty, his lunch dried out, Chun-seok is smoking on the balcony and his neck hurts. Forcing himself to concentrate and ignore the strange nag in his stomach took a lot of effort. Too much, if he missed this many texts on a day like this. From Joon-young: _I will make dinner._ From Hyun: _I understand you better now._ From Choi Eun-bok: _let's have soju_. From Ja-hee: _u wanna come do my chairs_

He almost fumbles his phone to the floor in his reply to hyung. _What do you mean?_

_That kind of person expects a lot of their children and even more of their wards._

Hyung isn't wrong, but it's not what Min expected him to say.

_As you predict, I am expected for dinner._

_Won't it be too late for you after that?_

Min holds in a bitter noise. Too late? It's already too late. It was too late for him in the car. It was too late for him when their mother was killed. It was too late for him long before he decided what he wanted from hyung was not to tell him but to fuck him.

All of this, too, is borrowed against Joon-young's obliviousness, and Joon-young is never and will never be oblivious.

_My uncle goes to bed early._

The others he doesn't answer. If Eun-bok is serious he'll repeat the offer. Ja-hee can put together her own furniture, and Min's not interested in meeting any albatrosses Joon-young's dumped on her to play house with Hyun.

Joon-young doesn't need an answer. Of course Min will come.

***

"Your brother grew up well," Joon-young reports as Min sets the table and Joon-young adds the final aromatics to their food, carrying the pan over as it sizzles. "I think this will be very good for him too. Challenges are good for a person."

 _I've been here for an hour and you haven't told me anything_ , Min wants to shout. "Can you challenge him?" he asks, deliberately pleasant. "It's been a while."

Joon-young smiles at him and serves, plating Min's food and setting it in front of him. It's the perfect proportion of rice to everything else, and Min is hungry. "Of course I can. There are things I also would like him to know."

"Like what?" Min brushes a grain of rice from the corner of his mouth onto his hand and licks it off. It's the sort of manners Joon-young wouldn't tolerate in front of anyone else, but this is just them.

Joon-young sips tea. "Don't you want to know if he cares for you?"

Min, for the sake of time, sips his own tea. Joon-young's pairings are always good. "He doesn't remember."

"Min." He sounds patient. He has the face that means Min's said something clever or stupid. "Do you think he has forgotten you entirely?"

"No," Min murmurs. He knows hyung hasn't. He's heard his nightmares, felt him clutch and shudder as he woke. He's deflected hyung's questions time and again. "But that doesn't mean he wants anything to do with me. Wasn't it convenience? You said that."

"It's been a long time. He might feel differently." Joon-young slices into a curled loin cut, skin marked by kitchen string. "I hung one of your paintings. The one with two faces. I thought it fit. I think it will help him remember."

His heart lurches in his chest, weightlessness like a very fast elevator. He hadn't noticed that was missing. He hasn't _looked_ at his paintings lately. Most of them are still facing the walls.

Hyun's face two years ago, confronting him with the picture of the palette and his signature. How Min lied to him. _I didn't know him, it was a gift_. How he lied. And now Joon-young --

Min stares at him, the fresh hurt of not being told, of Joon-young _still_ not telling him, welling too fiercely to hide a moment longer. He feels sick with it. Joon-young is meant to keep him. Min is supposed to be special to him. That's how it's supposed to be. He's not meant to play games like this with him. There are other targets. Better targets Joon-young doesn't know inside out. Targets that aren't boring.

But Joon-young is watching him as though Min is new and not boring at all, and he swallows hard. He didn't expect to feel this unsteady. Having dinner with Joon-young was meant to reassure him, not make it worse. "Are you trying to get rid of me?"

What other explanation is there? He's trying to give him away. Give him back to hyung, and Min might want hyung but he doesn't want to be abandoned again. He never thought Joon-young would. But this is him contemplating it, isn't it? This is what it looks like.

"No," Joon-young says. He takes a closer look at him and puts his hand over Min's. "I'm not. You should know that's not what I want."

"What _do_ you want?" he chokes. "You said we shouldn't reconcile."

Joon-young catches his hand, forces it to the tabletop, and leans down, face close to his. "Everyone wants someone who understands them. You helped me come closer with your painting. It is part of my challenge. You understand, don't you?" He nods to Min's plate, smiling. "Finish your dinner first."

 _I hate you_ , stifles his breath in his nose, makes a wheeze shudder in his throat.

Min doesn't. He doesn't. How can he? It's Joon-young. He just -- he just --

"You should have told me," he mutters. "I could have liked it especially. I could have picked one for you to take. You didn't have to steal it."

"Do you mean to say I haven't done enough for you? It is only a painting."

He looks up at Joon-young, at his placid eyes, feeling the warning weight of his strong arm on his wrist, the weight of Joon-young's mercy in not throwing him out of that car immediately, the weight of all that work to raise and feed and school him, and silently finishes his dinner.

Joon-young does the dishes while Min dries. Once that is finished they both wash their hands thoroughly, as Joon-young requires before sex, and go to the couch.

Sex doesn't make Min feel better this time. It's the same standard, and it should relax him, it should calm him. He should be able to drop into that familiar haze of being no mind and all sense where the most important things are Joon-young's cock in his mouth and the dildo Joon-young controls. It should be as easy as it always is.

It isn't.

Joon-young eventually strokes Min's hair off his cheek, looking down at him with a face that is no careful paint at all. "We have been doing different things lately," he says. "Is that what you want?"

Min wants him to leave, now that he is being asked what he wants. It's not the right answer. "Yes."

***

Min arrives at Hyun's hotel room tired and rumpled, watching the clock on his phone tick along as he waits for the door to be answered. _10:47. 10:48. 10:49_.

"Oh, you're here," hyung says blearily. He's hardly at all dressed. "I meant to wait up for you, but I fell asleep. Come in."

Min kisses him, the taste of Joon-young nothing compared to having hyung near and gripping onto him, feeling how his arms go around him in return, how his lips become sure and strong against his. "Bed," Min says.

"Absolutely," hyung says, and leads him by the hand. It's something Joon-young stopped doing after the first few times they had sex, but Min likes it. He likes that Hyun holds onto his hand and carries him along with him as though he cares not to leave him behind.

He's not very surprised when Hyun stills halfway through peeling Min's underwear down his legs.

"You're wet," surprised and revolted, and then: "That's not urine."

"No," Min admits. "It's not." Min takes his hand and guides it down past the stretch of his briefs and between his legs, and he's so open it's easy to fumble two of hyung's fingertips inside. "I want you to fuck me."

Hyung looks up, and his face isn't what Min expected. He expected his attempt at being sexy to be met with something tolerant if it wasn't amusing, and a smile if it was. He expected Hyun to respond. But he stares at Min narrow-eyed like Min gave away some terrible secret, and the longer he doesn't say anything the more Min's pulse jumps.

"You saw your uncle," Hyun says, "and then you had sex with your nonexclusive. Right?"

"Yes," Min says.

"Then you came here." There's a suspicion in Hyun's face, something so big it wraps all around his expression like a mask, his eyes narrow and his mouth flat, all of him terribly taut, and Min's stomach lurches fear.

Not like this. It shouldn't be like this. It should be Joon-young's doing, it should be somewhere and somewhen that's not with Hyun's fingers inside him. The delicate balance of all the secrets that are left to him and Joon-young shouldn't be upset by such a stupid thing as Min being too lazy to clean himself out between them.

He doesn't want coming to see him to be a mistake. He doesn't want to have been so stupid. Joon-young will never forgive him.

Min grabs for his wrist, forces his fingers deeper, squirming his legs as far apart as he can with his underwear still cuffing his knees, and he pants at him, trying to show him that he wants him. That there are better things to think about than suspicions.

"It was all of us at dinner," Min rushes. "My uncle doesn't mind we have sex. But I want you to fuck me too. Too, and instead. I like your cock better. Please. It was a long time without you."

"Begging doesn't suit you," hyung says.

He kisses Min and it's better. He dares to relax a little, to let go of his hand and put his arms around his shoulders and ease a shin free. Even in his squirming hyung holds his fingers inside, and they're so bare and warm that Min's getting hard. Just having him close does it for him, but inside -- he likes him inside so much.

It's all the better to wrap his legs around hyung, underwear tangled in his sock, and urge him closer. "I want to beg," Min tells him, realising he isn't lying even as he says it. He does want to beg, for all sorts of things, and he wants to be so powerful with him that his begging works.

Begging never works on Joon-young. Joon-young isn't like that. But hyung lets Min be a part of vulnerable things and that means Min can beg. The idea that he won't just be an annoyance is a novelty.

"I want to ask," he rephrases when Hyun still frowns. "I want to. I like you _better_. I like that I want you more. Please."

"Does he use condoms?" Hyun asks, shifting his fingers inside him.

Heat rings his neck and pools in the skin of his chest at the idea of hyung fucking Joon-young's leavings out of him. "Yes. Always. It's just lube."

"Good," hyung says quietly, and slips in a third, so easy that Min can't help but squirm delight.

Joon-young is almost always careful, too careful, and watching hyung explore where Joon-young has been, feeling him put in a fourth finger and test them inside him, makes him harden entirely. It's been long enough that he should be used to him checking, used to him acting as though Joon-young could ever be less than diligent, but he isn't. He suspects he never will be. "Please."

"Why are you begging me today?" hyung asks. He doesn't pull out his fingers but he doesn't move to deepen them either.

Min barely manages not to howl frustration. Often he appreciates Hyun's limited use of his intellect but _sometimes_ he would rather hit him and ride him unconscious into the floor.

"Now you're angry at me for saying that." Hyun pulls out his fingers. "What's going on, Sun-ho?"

Min does howl this time, but manages to choke it behind his wrist pressed to his mouth. This is going all wrong and he doesn't know how to fix it. "My case is stressful and I want sex. Don't you want me?" He didn't mean to say it like that, but now that he's said it he's not minded to take it back.

"I want you. I just don't want to fuck you like this." Hyung sits back on his shins. "Just go shower. Clean up."

A shiver runs through his skin, his hair standing up and his arms prickling, and Min sits up slowly, folding his legs under and sliding his socks and underwear down to the floor. He doesn't know how to argue, what would be the best tack to take. "I thought you liked it when I was ready."

"I like it when it's _your_ decision to be ready for _me_. This is you and your nonexclusive. I'm not interested in being part of that." Hyun puts his hand on top of Min's, the tips of his fingers curling and pressing against Min's palm. "Let me be very clear. You remember my suspicions about him, right?"

"I remember," he says warily.

"I am not interested in fucking Lee Joon-young. I will never be interested. I'm not interested in borrowing his lube either." Hyun exhales, shoulders falling. "Anyone who tells you I'm interested in any of that is lying. Go clean up. I'm tired of this."

Min feels himself unknot. "Really? What about other people? If it wasn't Joon-young, would it be the same?"

Hyung stares at him, his face doing strange half-expressions, coming and going faster than Min can interpret them, until it ends in a mix Min can't read. It looks unhappy. "Sun-ho." He squeezes Min's hand. "Do you still think you're in my way? That I'd rather -- it's not true. It is not true."

"Aren't I?" Min mumbles. "I haven't …" There are many, many secrets he's kept to himself, for all that he's been disgracefully loose-lipped in the past. "I am in your way. Aren't I troublesome?"

"You're worth it," hyung says. "I told you. I also told you that I'm not going to push you. But you shouldn't doubt me so much. You can tell me what would help."

"What you said. That helped." It did. Min feels better. It's one thing to have it implied, but another to have it _said_. He doesn't trust that hyung will hold to it, but at least he has said it. That's something Min can use, if not keep.

Hyun ruffles Min's hair. "Should I say it again? Is there someone else you're worried about? Your uncle? He's not my type."

Even as Lee Joon-ho, charming and pleasant, hyung doesn't want Joon-young? It startles Min. "You could like him."

"I gathered. But I am not interested in him. I'm interested in you." Hyung ruffles his hair again.

He bats his hand away, torn between pleasure at being touched so casually and remembering how hyung used to touch Min like that. It was Min's once upon a time and now he is giving it to Sun-ho. It makes him feel strange. Hyung reaches for his hair again. Min blocks him with his arm. "That's not necessary either."

"This is just us," Hyun tells him. "You and me. I wouldn't do this in front of anyone else. Or to anyone else. Except one person. You realise that, right?"

"I do," Min says reluctantly. He does realise, though he doesn't want to. "Just us two? Me and …" He pretends to think about it and lets him touch him this time, shivers skating along the back of his neck as his fingers slide over his scalp and dip to Min's nape. It's the easiest thing in the world to bend his head and let him stroke his hair. "You don't have any other lovers."

"My brother," Hyun says. "When we were little he liked this."

"Adults feel differently than children," Min lies. He doesn't feel any different about hyung touching him. It's just stronger, so strong sometimes Min could stake him to the ground and cage him and have him forever. Make _sure_ that Hyun will never leave him again. That Min can have him whenever he likes. Certainty.

Joon-young calls it cellaring, an ad-hoc imprecise term if there ever was one. Cellaring a feeling like his good family of good reputation cellared him. Cultivating it until he was certain that he could kill them.

Min wonders, idly, who he _wouldn't_ kill for hyung with his own certainty. It's a short list.

"I had dinner with my mother and asked her about Lee Joon-young's files," Hyun says, his hand warm on the back of Min's neck. "She said they didn't officially exist because the archives burned down."

Min frowns. Joon-young called her _that woman_ with a smile like the one he uses for Ja-hee. Useful when he needs them, ridiculously foolish when he doesn't. To Min that's the whole of the human race aside from Joon-young and Hyun, but Joon-young doesn't ask him about his views anymore. He's never known the Planning Officer to be anything but too much of a stick in the mud, and he's quite sure hyung is quoting her directly. "Professionally speaking, that's very negligent."

"Yeah." Hyun's thumb strokes a cervical vertebra; C7, if Min remembers right. A fundamental structure and yet a fracture wouldn't be fatal, should hyung decide on it. "They existed. At one time, they existed. There were records of Lee Joon-young. Now she says not that they're missing or destroyed, but that they don't exist in the system."

Min wonders where this is going. "Paper archives were a while ago."

He feels hyung's shrug through his arm, how it makes his hand rasp heavy on Min's skin. "Exactly. It was never digitised. I have it."

Min's fingers twitch. This is dangerous. This is so dangerous. He's not sure Joon-young _knows_ his files weren't in those archives. If he did know -- if he did, and who has them, then there will be all the more reason for him to take Hyun. Min forces himself to sound dismissive. "How useful can a file twenty years out of date be?"

Hyung looks over at him. "He was arrested for armed robbery, but he was a suspect in bodiless murders that were painstaking and clever. Someone capable of that being arrested for something so simple? Do you think that makes sense?" Hyun asks back.

Min smiles. These are better questions than _who did he kill_ or _why did he kill them_. "In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but robbery?"

"Augustine," hyung says with a nod. "The pirate before Alexander the Great. A lesser power to a greater power of the same kind," soft, eyes unfocusing, and he sits up, folding his legs, and puts his hand on Min's knee, his mouth moving a little, soundless as he tilts his head this way and that.

Watching him frown over a puzzle Min has set him, even if his piece is only a little corner of Joon-young's machinations, thrills him as much as it makes him remember they didn't get around to fucking. Hyung is taking him seriously. Seriously enough to openly contemplate it rather than dismiss him out of hand the way he dismisses so many other things.

Min's so rarely had the chance to watch him like this. He remembers that tilt from Min destroying his homework, from their father saying to just open a can and put it on a plate, from lying with him on the floor, drawing while streetlights slowly turned on outside, one by one, and shadows stretched over them in their father's absence.

As an adult -- as an adult, Min hasn't changed. He still likes the closeness of hyung's thoughts, laid in complex expressions that come and go, a stillness in his lax hands and round shoulders as though he trusts Min to guard him all the while.

Min will. He knows that already. The list is short because it doesn't exist. Even Joon-young. If it becomes necessary, even Joon-young.

The decision calms him. Nothing has changed. Joon-young is Joon-young and Hyun is Min's. He will be Min's no matter what it takes. A little break and enter is hardly difficult.

"The timelines given in the file only fit if he was framed for the robberies," Hyun says eventually, tapping his finger. "Corrupt enough to frame him so hastily is vulnerable enough to be blackmailed. An absence of justice in that situation is total." He closes his fists gently, opens them. "An absence of justice. Or an inability for lack of knowledge. There's something I don't remember." Hyung's eyes squeeze shut. "Something important about his case. I once knew it. It was important. It's relevant. It was a secret too. A different one. I --"

Hyung hesitates, open-mouthed, wordless, and Min feels a strange distance he doesn't like, a sensation very similar to watching Eun-bok struggle to balance on his feet with a pelvis bolted together from spatchcocked halves. To watching Hyun aim and fire. To watching him bury the dogs. If it's _that_ he's trying to remember --

Enough. Hyun can't remember that. He can't. It would -- Min doesn't know what it would do exactly, but he knows he doesn't want it. Min tries to distract him. "As a lawyer, rather than call them murders without the body, they are suspected murders. I would put them that way. It's more appropriate to the relevant statutes."

It takes a moment, a dangerous, sliding breath of uncertainty, before Hyun blinks out of the daze and turns to him with eyes so sharp Min swallows a hiccup of relief. "Yes, now that I think about it," hyung says. "They are suspected murder cases. Like Min. Like he was. I thought he disappeared, then I thought he was dead, and then you told me he was taken by Lee Joon-young."

"I didn't really," Min says.

"You did," Hyun says, and he shifts, settles himself. Min wrinkles his nose and Hyun touches his cheek, intimacy unexpected. "I haven't thanked you for that."

He's so lovely and confident it hurts to look at him. Min is pathetic beside him, always, but especially so when they're not fucking. He's never been able to hold in himself the kind of self-image that would let him sit cross-legged, not a stitch on, and be able to think about anything but putting his clothes back on. "You shouldn't."

Hyun spreads his hands on his knees, the backs tanned from driving. "I was thinking, while I read the file, what it was like for him to be raised by Lee Joon-young. What sort of person he might be. If he grew to be cruel or kind as an adult. How badly he was exploited. The Lee Joon-young in that file would have exploited him."

Min lies down. It's easier to fold his hands on his stomach and look at the ceiling than at hyung. "Is this another request for information I don't have?"

"No. I'm asking what you think."

He's not Joon-young. He doesn't enjoy talking about himself. "It's not interesting. As an adult a cruel person or a kind person are equal under the law. Any adult is capable of self-determination until a court finds differently."

"I thought you preferred nurture over nature," Hyun says. "But it doesn't sound like you do."

"My uncle subscribes to the critical period theory," Min says. "He says some personalities are too difficult to change from their base state and must be accepted before they can be accurately contained."

Hyung leans into Min's field of view. "He thinks you have one of these personalities. So he encouraged you to be a lawyer?"

Min shrugs. "My uncle raised me alone and finances were a burden. At this rank I can repay my expensive education."

"He's an examiner," Hyun says. "That's a lot of university schooling too."

"We made it work." Min's careful to keep his tone bored. "Who paid for your expensive education, Professor Lee?"

Hyun laughs. "Oh, life insurance. My father's. My foster mother held it in trust for me. I decided I wanted to go and I went. New York is interesting. Some parts aren't so different." He takes Min's hand. "But in others we could do this in public. I could take you to dinner and kiss you every time I wanted to."

Min feels a flutter of unease at Hyun's intensity. "What, when I drink too much?"

"No." Hyun says meditative, amused. "When you look at me. When you turn your head just so. When you say something that reminds me you might be almost my level of genius."

His belly clenches, a hard, nauseous tension. Min remembers that word out of their father's mouth. _My son the genius_ . _Genius barista. Genius child. My Hyun is a genius!_

No words for Min at all. Never any words for Min. He would say something cutting but the way Hyun says it, as though he does stare at Min and think about kissing him all the time, reminds him this isn't the time and place for hurting hyung. Some weapons should be reserved.

Hyun's brows draw together. "You didn't like that." His eyes are very sharp and very close, the mole on his cheek devastatingly attractive. "You don't like that word."

It's on the tip of Min's tongue to joke. He means to, but: "You're not just a genius like that. You're special."

"Am I?" He sounds pleased, and he leans in, kisses him quick and sweet. "Does that mean you trust me?"

Does he? Isn't hyung worth as much honesty as Chun-seok? He licks his lips. "Sometimes."

"I've said cleaning is my hobby." He shifts his hand and presses his thumb under Min's eye; an eyelash, he realises when hyung shows it to him on the tip of his finger. Hyung brushes it away. Min wants to protest but the way hyung is looking at him holds his tongue still. "Can I clean you?"

Min pictures it, hyung's fingers scraping lube out of him only to replace it with his own, and bites his lips shut for a moment to compose himself. He likes when hyung … possesses him. Even in this way. Having Joon-young repurposed is one thing, but this -- this is better. This is hyung, claiming, and now that Min knows it's possible he wants it. "Yes."

Hyung makes good on his word, dragging Min to the bathroom by the hand, and in the shower he washes Min's hair and under his arms and between his legs, holding up his thigh so he can put in his fingers, and Min leans against him, gripping hard onto the showerhead attachment, tiles freezing the side of his hand, in a desperate attempt at keeping balance.

All that touch, careful and soap-foamed and thorough, has him shaking. _Non reciprocal_ , Min remembers, and wonders if he's allowed to turn around and see him. It feels like a long time since he's seen hyung's face. It feels like a long time of hyung's fingers in him, his mouth on the back of Min's neck, and his skin is overheated and damp, water running down his legs.

Hyung pauses his fingers inside him, a wedge of what Min thinks is four stacked together, inside him to the knuckle and just a bit past. The bottle of Hyun's favourite lubrication is in the rack to Min's left, right in his line of sight, and it's already half-empty. "I want to fuck you," he says against Min's skin. "Here, like this. Can I?"

He wants to see hyung's face. Desperately. "I want to see you," he says without meaning to.

"This is tile." It's not a refusal. Min relaxes a little. "You'll be okay?"

"Yes," Min says, and hyung takes out his fingers, so slowly Min fights not to buckle to his knees, and helps him turn around.

The wall _is_ cold. Cold and unpleasantly damp, his shoulders sticking. But he can see Hyun now, close enough the drifting steam around them doesn't obscure his face, and Min puts his arms around him, links his fingers against the back of his neck. His face. Min's always liked to look at him.

Especially when he smiles, like he is now, and Min smiles back. Even after meeting Joon-young, hyung smiles at him.

Min laughs at his struggle with the condom. "It's not easy," hyung huffs, shaking water off his hand, and Min leans down, shielding him from the spray, watching how the latex smooths the colour of his cock, glosses his skin like oil on a wrestler. Min strokes him, just for the pleasure of how his hand looks, just for the way hyung sounds, and leans back.

"You'll tell me if you need more," Hyun says, hitching Min's knee up to his waist, his hips pressing Min's legs open. "I don't know how much the water's washed off."

"Yes," Min says, and the first almost-catch has him biting his fingers before he remembers Joon-young knows that tell and will ask questions Min especially doesn't want to answer. He clutches hyung's shoulders instead, joints bending, letting himself pant and beg for time, and Hyun waits, his hands gratifyingly tight on Min's arse, his cock nudged just that bit inside him. Anticipation skirls along his spine.

It feels good to cling and clutch to each other in this place of hot air and slippery skins. It feels good the way _I don't want to fuck Lee Joon-young, he's not my type_ , felt good. Right now he has hyung all to himself. Him, and all for Min. Hyung's going to fuck him because hyung wants to fuck him. Just that. Just him. Hyung, hard and ready, wanting to fuck, waiting for Min's permission. Just his. It makes Min feel drunk and giddy.

"Go on. I like it," truthful, and when he sees hyung's smile he repeats himself just to make it last longer. "Please."

Hyung kisses him, pushes in and kisses him, those open-mouthed welcoming kisses where he drags him close, manhandles Min really, the better to cram their mouths together and angle their noses and push him against the wall, and Min's relief beats double with his pulse. For now Min still has him all to himself, just like this, and hyung wants him like this too, doesn't he? He wants Min like this. To himself. No Joon-young or nonexclusive or anyone.

Min likes feeling special. He's always liked it from Joon-young and he likes being special to hyung too.

"Have you done this?" Min asks him in a slow moment while they catch their breaths, Hyun fucking him in a frustrating, tantalising count of one in, four out. He's lightheaded, his mouth and nose dry, but he doesn't want to tell him. He doesn't want to let on in case hyung cares enough about little things like that to stop. "Sex in a shower?"

"Once or twice." Hyung shrugs, muscles moving broadly under Min's hands. "Most showers in New York are too small. Or they're bathtubs."

"We could do that," Min says. "In a bath."

"Too slippery. You'll hit your head," hyung grunts, and he grunts again when Min reaches down and wraps his fingers around him just where the condom leaves off, his own belly fascinatingly hot against his forearm. It's all fascinating, damp and slippery, a melding of textures. Their balls, and the condom, hyung's pubic hair smothered with lube. "Don't be impatient."

Does it seem like that to hyung? "I'm just touching." Min runs his fingers through it, gathers a curl around his finger and tugs. Hyun swears, swears again in muddled Korean translation as though, even at a moment like this, he worries Min will misunderstand. Even like this, he worries. He wants to be sure that Min knows, because -- because he cares about Sun-ho, doesn't he? He says he cares. Even about things like this.

It makes Min feel like he's wearing a hotel bathrobe, not being fucked up against a wall, a feeling huge and dizzy and sweltering, like he could fold an arm over his stomach and walk into a snowstorm and be warm no matter how long it lasts.

He doesn't know what to do with it, and he blinks, unsure if he's actually dizzy or not. It could just be the feeling.

Hyung pauses, his cock solidly inside him, his thighs just as solid against the underside of Min's, holding him up, supporting him, making that warmth flush him all over again, and touches his face. "Are you okay?"

Min leans into it, eyes shut, grappling with that _feeling_ , that -- that emotion. A hotel bathrobe, but also not just a hotel bathrobe, one of hyung's nice ones, and Min wishes he were a normal person so he could point to this emotion, name it and hang it up and put it away. But he isn't and he doesn't know how to begin.

"Sun-ho. Talk to me." Hyung pries one of his eyes open and Min glares at the edge of his thumbnail. "Good, you're conscious. Is it too hot in here? Talk to me."

He wishes he could ask Joon-young. "I don't want you to stop touching me." Min licks his dry lips. "I don't ever want you to stop touching me. I -- ever. Ever. If you could fuck me forever --" It's ridiculous. He sounds ridiculous. "Never mind."

Hyung kisses him, warm and firm, and it's such a surprise Min wonders if he should push him off and demand an explanation. Why is that something to kiss him for?

"I'd like that too," Hyun says. He sounds like he's smiling. Min pulls back, focuses. He _is_ smiling. Hyung's lashes are thick in the steam, a little wrinkle at the corner of his right eye as though he's about to laugh. "It's possession for you. You want to possess. That's how you understand relationships. The more you feel about a person, the more you want to own them. Right?"

Min feels overexposed. He's never heard of anyone saying such things so directly. He's never _seen_ this. He wonders if Joon-young has a show where people say things like this, just like that. He wonders how Hyun decided this was the right way to talk to Min. "Something like that."

"And you're a solitary person. So, for you to say that, you must like me very much. That's a little bit romantic." Hyung grins and takes Min's hand, linking their fingers. His palm is broader but Min's fingers are longer and they fit just so. It's deceptive, how they fit. "I think it means you like me as much as I like you."

Min stares up at him, startled into speechless disbelief.

"I feel that way too," hyung says. He squeezes their fingers together. Min manages the ghost of a breath, chest hitching, and he shifts and realises, remembers, his cock is still inside Min. They're both still hard, and they were just fucking, and Min doesn't know what to say.

He can't possibly feel this -- this bathrobe-emotion, this -- he can't. Not about Min. He doesn't deserve it. He hasn't earned it. He feels tiny. His skin is too small for the whole of the protest that wants to squeeze out of his throat. He wants to pop hyung's eyes out of their sockets. He wants to push him away and watch the glass cubicle shatter. He wants him to say it again.

"Sun-ho. Can you believe me?"

No-one's said this to him before.

Not even Joon-young.

"I don't know," he says. Min's not sure how he could begin to understand Hyun wanting him like this too. He doesn't even know if he heard right.

There are rules for this. Min knows there are rules, though he doesn't know what they are. Does hyung expect him to know what to do with this?

Hyung gives him a careful look the way people scrutinise wine glasses and kisses him. The firmness of his mouth is reassuring. "You haven't felt this way before, right?" Min nods. "So it's new. You don't have to believe me. Just know that I mean it. Do you want to stop fucking for tonight?"

"No." Min clears his throat. The condescending gentleness helps him gather his thoughts. "No. But not here. Too much steam." It's too much, start to finish, the humid air and hyung's nearness and the sticky-slick press of their skins, all the distension of flesh that comes with fucking, bodies at angles obtuse and acute.

"All right," Hyun says, easy as though as Min isn't a disappointment, and he slides out with a careful grip on Min's waist, steadies him. They dry off with towels and throw one onto the bed, taller than Min, broad as the span of hyung's arms, and when Min crawls onto it he looks round to find Hyun watching him.

Hyun, beautiful and naked, who just said he feels the same, who just said he feels possessive of Min too, more or less, and Min doesn't know what to make of any of it. He thought it would be harder. That he would have to prove himself somehow.

Something horrible and difficult, and then hyung would say something Min doesn't have the words for, something that would feel the way hyung says _I feel the same_ felt, and that would be that. Not like this out of nowhere, with his cock in him and that smile as though it made him happy.

He doesn't understand. "Did you take that to mean I loved you?" Min asks him. It's the only way that sequence makes sense. If hyung thought _forever_ meant -- that. He called it romantic.

Hyun pauses with his knee on the bed.

"I'm asking you if you think I love you," Min snaps, too impatient to wait, too afraid of him changing his mind after Min gets used to the idea.

"That's not up to me," Hyun says, very quiet. He meets Min's eyes and Min is struck by the stress framing them. His tense cheeks and his drawn mouth. The way he sighs. "I like to be told my partners care about me. I like it when you say you like me, that I'm special to you. It's a very common human trait."

This matters to hyung somehow. It matters to him. Min sits up, conscious of the shift of his body, how it emphasises his emptiness without hyung's cock. Does it matter as much to hyung as it does Min? But he grew up different. Normal. Why should it matter that Min -- Jung Sun-ho -- loves him or not? Hyung has other people.

"You think I can care," Min says finally, understanding the part of the puzzle that keeps escaping him. Talking to people is always like this. When they say things about feelings it's with this layer of fuzzy allusion that Min has to dig and dig and try and try to peel back into things he understands, like criminal codes and the anatomical reasons why hyung's bottom is sexier when he sleeps on his front.

"Don't you?"

Min is not a good person. Hyun's said as much himself. Min has never understood himself as someone who loves. He flirts with the idea, considers it from time to time, but only as a laughable distraction. "I understand possessiveness isn't a good romantic trait."

Hyung's stare, long and unblinking and so, so narrow, makes anything else Min could have said dry up in his mouth. "Traits don't work that way. They're not moral. A tendency to possess is fine in moderation. It's also better with reciprocity." He gestures a finger between them. "Which you have. From me to you."

Min blinks. "You're possessive of me?"

Hyung chuckles. "You don't entirely trust me yet. That's fine. You have me," hyung says, crawling onto the bed and lying beside Min, his knee against Min's thigh. "Like you said, Sun-ho. I want to keep my cock inside you forever. I don't want you to stop touching me. I want to fuck you forever." His own words. Hyun bites at his throat, just under his ear. "I'm keeping you."

Min fights a pleasant shiver. "Even though you don't have me?"

"I'm keeping what I can," hyung says archly. "If it is him, you are playing games with a very dangerous person. Asking you to be exclusive in those circumstances? No. That would put you in more danger. All I can do is trust you more than you trust me. I trust that you will handle yourself and I trust you will call me when you need me."

Min fidgets with a loose thread. It's not a question of exclusivity. It's _not_ , it's Joon-young and it's not a decision, it's a necessity. It's the two of them, together. Joon-young won't leave him. Min won't leave him. That's the way it's meant to be. There's nothing for hyung to ask of Min. There has to be nothing. "If I did call you while I was with him, it would be an emergency."

Hyung makes a slow, slow noise, barely audible, and puts his hand on Min's thigh. "I know. That's why you should understand. If you need me, call me. If I find whatever else it is that you're hiding in the process of dealing with the emergency, fine. If it's as terrible as you think it is, fine. I will deal with it after you are safe. Only then. You come first."

Hyun looks like he means it. The idea of losing his touch hurts. Just the thought of that choice between calling hyung and having Joon-young makes his skin prickle. Hyung putting him first. It can't be as unilaterally true as hyung makes it sound, but it feels good. "Is this a promise?"

"Yes. Because I am possessive too and I worry about you." He folds his fingers in the hair behind Min's ear. "I promise."

Hyung isn't expectant in his stare. He's just looking. Min's used to the way he examines Min's face and body without asking for anything from him except the chance to do it for longer. It's the sort of thing no-one else ever does.

He made Min a promise. Min should reciprocate somehow. He knows that much and perhaps he was meant to have this. It was all meant to be like this. Hyung special to him, and Min special to hyung. He feels special to him. His favourite, the way he isn't to Joon-young anymore. It's nothing Min can describe. "It was fate. Just." He swallows. "Fate."

"What was?" Hyung's stroking his stomach with a lovely, idle sweep of his fingertips. Min fumbles and squeezes his knuckles awkwardly, too wound up to link their hands properly. He doesn't know how to say this right. But maybe, if hyung can promise him to set aside Joon-young for Min's sake, then Min can set aside Joon-young for a moment for his sake.

"Us. Before." It's still hard to say. It's all he's sure of. "In the bar. When I came to you and you picked me." It feels like a huge, horrible vulnerability being torn out of his insides, offered up wriggling and disgusting. "There were so many other men and you said no to them all. I wanted you to be mine." He licks his lips. Min's throat is closing up but Hyun fixes their grip, slides his fingers between Min's, and it makes it easier to keep trying. "You didn't know, but I wanted you and you picked me. I think it was fate. Us."

"You said you weren't romantic." Hyung smiles, slow and creeping, a little tug here, a quirk of his lip there, until it spreads and spreads and even when he bends his head Min can still see the edges of his smile. "I don't believe in fate. But I know what you mean. I'm happy we met too, Sun-ho."

Desire and relief rush back in and Min claws at him, yanking at his arm, his hip, making an ungainly sprawl of his legs and trying to tug hyung between them. Hyung _understands_. Even Joon-young wouldn't understand him like this. "It's good you're mine. It's good." It's so true his chest aches. Even now he means it. Even at the beginning he meant it.

"It is," hyung agrees, and fucks into him, rough and clumsy. Min comes to the sound of _yours, Sun-ho, yours, I'm yours_ and even if Joon-young is right and he never understands love, never had or never will have the capacity, surely it is like this. Surely, if Hyun is so, so eager to kiss him again afterwards, if he leans across the bed to feed him and only laughs when Min bites his fingers, it is something like this.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please note the Abuse warning; it's relevant. Also warning for depiction and discussion, direct and indirect, of sexual abuse. 
> 
> Sorry this took so long!

He stirs to the smell of hyung's skin, his face mashed against something that, when he gropes for it, resolves into possibly being an arm. It's so clearly still dark outside, even with his eyes shut, that he whines and tries to ignore his bladder. Hyung pokes him in the shin with his toes, nails scraping, and startles him into realising that he really does need to piss. Min shakes his head and buries his face against the sheets, hyung's shoulder bending his ear. He wants to stay like this.

"Sorry," Hyun says. "I want time to talk to you before you go to work. They do breakfast."

Min scowls. He's hardly the first person to force Min out of sleep at inopportune hours -- during Joon-young's plastic surgery period they moved at night -- but it's so rare that he has the chance to wake up with Hyun warm and naked. "It must be love," he mutters. "I don't want to kill you."

He means it seriously, but he also means it to be taken as a joke of the sort he's seen in dramas before. Something hyung can laugh off. But he says nothing at all, doesn't move, and Min wonders if he's made a mistake.

"Get coffee," he orders, trying to forestall whatever that silence means. He painstakingly extricates himself without peeing on the bed, the floor, or hyung, navigating with his eyes shut as much as possible so he doesn't have to see whatever expression hyung is wearing.

"Come back," Hyun says.

"You woke me up," Min snaps without turning around. He gets in the shower and uses the pissing time to stretch his legs and back out of making him walk like an automaton. Being folded up like that feels good when he's fucked but it hurts afterwards, reminds him that he quit industrial deliveries when Joon-young started earning enough to let Min focus full-time on university.

Min takes the head out of the socket and rinses the wall, puts it back and feels better once he gets out, muscles weak from stretching and his hair a bit damp, but more alert. More like he could manage, probably, a conversation that hyung would wake him up this early for. Could manage that strange quiet in the dark.

He washes his face and hands, dries off, and snuggles into a bathrobe. It still feels good, and thinking about hyung still feels as good. It's a surprisingly pleasant sensation, serendipitous if anything, and Min ignores the neat stack of his clothing on the desk and puts his feet up on the couch facing the bed where Hyun sits. The pettiness eases his mood.

Hyung's in a towel, reading something on his phone and gloriously handsome, and he smiles at Min when he looks up. "You look comfortable."

"I am," Min says, tucking his feet into the robe, curling his toes for the pleasure of it. "Did you order for us?"

"Mm. You're not coming back to bed, are you," the turn of his mouth mocking. Min isn't sure of whom. "My turn then. Answer it when they show up."

Min watches him go, then gets up and retrieves his phone. Emails, texts, voicemails. His hair's too wet to listen to the voicemails and he's not in the mood for Ja-hee or Joon-young, so he goes through his email instead. A lot of it is about the Chairman Kim case. Attorney Kang wants to see him in her office as soon as he arrives. Prosecutor Ha forwarded an email chain between Attorney Kang, Prosecutor Ha, and Judge Su about whether Min is too close to the case to be dealing with the case files.

Prosecutor Ha advocated he remain and won, narrowly, with Attorney Kang's support. Two sponsors willing to speak up for him even before the police finish their preliminary conclusions isn't a bad position to be in. It'll be helpful in the future and if he's meeting Attorney Kang regardless he might as well lobby for the case handover.

Though if she knows Kang Ji-seo is dead, Chun-seok will also know as soon as he arrives to work. He's not sure what could mollify Chun-seok if it happens that he wants to keep the case and the others overrule him and give it to Min over his objections. Coffee likely won't be enough. He's not sure what would be enough. Min would never forgive anyone who did that.

Min tightens his belt and gets up when the door sounds, taking the cart and dragging it inside, careful of crockery and cutlery. He recognises enough of her face when he looks up that he puts his body between the bathroom and the door and reaches for her wrist. She yanks. He doesn't move.

"Just checking on him," she says.

"You've checked," Min says, mild. He wants to drink his coffee, not have it thrown at him.

She frowns. "I didn't hear anything about you looking after him."

"Does he tell any of us everything?" Min says with all the bitterness he feels.

She laughs, her mouth pulling down at the edges. "That's rich coming from you." When she's done struggling Min lets her go and shuts the door in her face. She'll report to Joon-young that she saw him. Fine. Min knows how to construct an argument.

Coffee, coffee, coffee. He pours one mugful, drains it, then pours another, listens to the shower and watches hazy blue morning rise along the sides of skyscrapers, dulled by intermittently-lit windows framing office workers the size of his thumbnail.

"You like heights," he says over his shoulder when he hears the bathroom door open, the pad of footsteps on carpet, the clink of porcelain and rasp of fabric on wet skin. "You always pick the fifteenth floor at least."

Hyun puts his arm around him, hand finding Min's in his pocket and linking with his, coffee in the other hand, and Min squeezes back and watches him sip it like someone raised to mugs and casual affairs, not cup and saucer black tie. Perhaps Joon-young's friends just liked to pretend respectability, or Hyun's foster mother never took him to work events.

"I do. I like the distance from them." Hyun nods to the specked traffic moving about on the ground. "Anyway, let's eat."

Min lets his hand go and pours more coffee, adding a teaspoon of sugar to Hyun's, and starts peeling an orange for him, so fresh oil sprays his hands. It's something Joon-young does when they visit hospitals and hospices, holding careful segments to their mouths and smiling when they wince at the sting to cut lips and bruised throats.

It's a power Joon-young has, that ability to offer things against people's own self-interest and have them take it and thank him. The closest Min ever comes is quoting the criminal code on attorney-client privilege and watching their mouths work with the desire to _talk_. They always want to talk. They want to believe they can trust him and they do. It's such a different thing from the way Joon-young skips past all that effort and makes them let themselves be hurt.

How much that power has to do with Min, with almost nineteen years of separation, with missing hyung so much every morning was drudgery and every night was a fight not to dream of having him back lest he cry too loudly, is an open question these days.

He used to think it didn't have anything to do with him. That it was something Joon-young did to other people and only showed Min because Joon-young knew he would appreciate it too. Something shared between them, sitting across from each other at bedsides and flanking mourners at funerals.

But Joon-young still hasn't told him he invited hyung for tea and Min knows him in his pathetic, petty desires.

Joon-young would have taken the opportunity to look and build himself a fantasy, a future, a thought leaping ahead in the ways that serve him well in his murders and always hamper him everywhere else. Maybe one he's had all this time that Min never knew about.

It's a strange feeling to be bothered for someone else, an intrusive little nag so out of place in his mind, but it bothers him that Joon-young made hyung take his shirt off and wear one of Joon-young's. His motives are so transparent it's pathetic and yet Hyun doesn't have any idea at all. Hyun, of anyone, if he's so central, so necessary -- Joon-young should have just said. Hyun might have even said yes.

But of course he didn't ask for the same reasons Min has decided, more or less, never to tell hyung anything again.

Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic, all of them.

"I expected you to say it was too early to think and try to put this off to later," Hyun says. "But you're thinking a lot already."

Min scowls and covers it with a sip, pulling himself out of his worries. Joon-young will still be Joon-young if he focuses on hyung and his sharp eyes for a while. "If I can't sleep there's no point wasting the time."

"Sorry about that," hyung says. "I really did just want to talk. Actually, I wanted to ask you a few things. First, your uncle."

"What about him?" Min watches Hyun watch him. He picks out a wrinkled cherry tomato and crushes it against the roof of his mouth, a rush of juices and heat on his tongue. "It's not a secret that he's my guardian. If you're worried."

"You said he didn't mind you and your nonexclusive. That the three of you know each other."

Min takes one of the orange segments next. "You only suspect my nonexclusive is Lee Joon-young," he says mildly. "You have no proof. Besides, isn't it a good thing my uncle hasn't rejected me?" He pretends concern. "I know how these things usually go."

Hyung frowns over his mug. "I'm not talking to my lover Sun-ho, am I? I'm talking to Attorney Jung."

"Maybe." Min fills a bowl with rice, smothers it in sauces. This breakfast is such a mishmash of full English and kimchi and japchae and two buttered pancakes that he suspects Hyun's instructions were _I don't care, whatever you have for breakfast, it's fine, everything, yes, that's good, whatever_. "Your questions?"

"If you'll answer them," Hyun says. "Regardless, I wanted to know. If your uncle doesn't mind that you have sex with your nonexclusive in the same house, what is their relationship? That is unusual."

Min shrugs, careful and casual, and a smile comes easily. If even this isn't normal to Hyun, what would he do if he knew it was the man he thought was Min's uncle? "Ah. It was a matter of mutual attraction and my uncle said it was fine." He wrinkles his nose. "It was really just coincidence."

Hyun is watching him, leaning forward, hands dangling easy in the broad space between his knees, and Min feels the first clawing itch of apprehension at how much Hyun looks like Joon-young's worst. He will have to be very careful. More careful than he has been in the past.

"You didn't wake me up this early just for that," Min prods, impatient with being scrutinised so closely.

"So he sanctioned the relationship." He tilts his head. "How old were you when he allowed it to start?"

Min smiles contempt and lies. "About sixteen, I suppose."

Hyun's question is close to meaningless, and even moreso because it's Joon-young. He knows what he's trying to say. Allowed it, he says, as though it hadn't been Min's idea to begin with. Min proposed turning the anatomical exams into sex for convenience, Joon-young said they would have to wait to his birthday, Min said that was fine, Joon-young said what he would allow. Joon-young read a book about how to do it properly, taught Min on his birthday, and that was that.

He wonders if Hyun would think that wrong of Joon-young. Probably.

"It was a long time ago." Min takes a bite. "We're all adults these days." There's the law, of course, and he's argued it often enough. So many murder in revenge for sexual violence against children and mothers. The law says Min at twelve had no business proposing anything of the sort.

But this is not a question suited to establishing a legal approach. This is a moral frame trying to put ethics on he and Joon-young as though any of it could ever fit. It amuses him to think of Joon-young sorting through appropriate reactions to being accused of the very crimes he murdered his family for to begin with.

Hyun sits back. There's no softness in his face now. Min misses it. "If I asked your uncle about your nonexclusive?"

Min raises an eyebrow. If it's a threat, it's a poor attempt at one. "He allows it. That doesn't mean he approves. He certainly wouldn't approve of my liaison with you. I don't think you're willing to expose me to that sort of risk."

"This is what doesn't make sense to me. You say your nonexclusive and your uncle are acquainted well enough that he gives permission for him to have a relationship with his underage ward. But he would balk at you having a relationship with me as an adult?"

"Ah. The answer is quite simple. I would say that medical examiner Lee Joon-ho," Min says, with great pleasure, "will not approve of anyone else having me. He has his own affairs, so of course I cannot say with one hundred percent proof, but I would think so. It would be very out of character for him if he did."

"That makes no sense," Hyun says flatly. "He doesn't seem the kind of person to care about adultery."

Min finishes his coffee, liking the frustration on his face. "Still, for that reason, it would be better not to mention me at all. You did promise." He sees the scrunch of his eyebrows, the way he's still in a towel, and pauses. "Did you hope to fuck me first?"

"I hope you'll fuck me afterwards," Hyun says.

Min raises an eyebrow, corralling the impending hurt that would've risen if hyung said yes, and carefully pours more tea as insolently as he can manage. "You're welcome to come over here whenever you're finished your interrogation."

"One more question." He doesn't look amused at all. Min is beginning to wonder if he's misjudged the entire conversation. "You said your uncle might be interested in me."

Min sips. It's a little too hot, and he burns his tongue. Fitting. "Yes."

"I don't remember most of my childhood," hyung says, and hearing it, though he suspected, is a terrible, terrible sensation, a prickle like needles along his scalp.

Hyung really doesn't remember any of it. Min could remind him. He could put down his tea and spread his legs and ask him how it feels to fuck his brother.

There was a time when he desperately wanted to scream _look at me, see me, remember me_ , and it would have been a wonderful vengeance then. But now there is something to lose. Now he knows what it feels like when Hyun kisses down his spine, when he laughs on the phone and asks what Min is thinking, when he is a sweaty, pleased weight after sex. He knows what it feels like to have hyung's approval, his mouth on Min's skin, his easy yield to Min's cock inside him.

Against that being remembered seems smaller. Not unimportant, it still claws at him, but less important than it was. There are other memories, now, than calling for hyung on the other side of the wall.

"Can you tell me, does he know me from a long time ago?" Hyun frowns. "He doesn't look at me like he wants to fuck me. He looks like he knows me."

Min pauses, acutely aware of the risk. He could lie. But the truth here is easier. "It's possible. We weren't always together."

Min _thinks_ hyung and Joon-young met. He _thinks_ Joon-young took him because of what Hyun said to him. He _thinks_ hyung broke the promise with Joon-young. But he's never been sure. It's like Hyun's belief about Joon-young. Ninety-nine percent suspicion and nothing more than scattered circumstantial proof.

"I don't know. I wish I could say for sure." Min shrugs, uncomfortable with the admission. He wishes a lot of things. He wishes surety almost all the time about so many things and unfairly almost never gets it. "It would certainly explain the tea."

"Why didn't you know about his house?" Hyun doesn't look suspicious now. It's like he's asking because he's _concerned_. "Isn't it odd to keep that from your nephew?"

"It could have been recent," Min says mildly, hating that he's guessing, _hating_ that he has to guess, "and he didn't want to disappoint me before it was final."

Hyung shakes his head. "He's been there a while."

It's a fist, really, cold and terrible, just how much he's been left out of Joon-young's plans. He doesn't know how long ago Joon-young stopped trusting him. He doesn't even know _why_. Min manages to smile. "There's no reason for him to tell me everything. _I_ don't tell him everything," raising his eyebrows.

"Ah, am I prying too much?" hyung says. "It just seemed odd."

"I understand you are a curious person," Min says instead of screaming at him to shut up, and wets his mouth. "So, is that all?"

Hyun opens his mouth, closes it, and the hesitation is so unlike him that Min feels the first twisting fold of terror.

"I'm trying to make sense of the timeline last night," Hyun says. "You left work. You met your uncle --"

"He came to mine," Min interrupts.

"He came to yours, and you had dinner. Your nonexclusive was also there, and you had sex. Then you came here. But the only way you would have time for that much lubrication would be if you were having sex while your uncle was making dinner."

Min shrugs. "I haven't heard a question yet."

Hyun sits forward, hands linked. "You don't close your bedroom door, Sun-ho. I've never known you to close it."

"I don't," Min agrees, almost enjoying the way his stomach is hard and tight and anxious.

"So," licking his lips, frowning, "you effectively had sex with your nonexclusive in front of your uncle. He would have heard you. You don't find that odd?"

Min smiles at him, tempted to relax. Is that all that's bothering him? How … normal. Hyun is so _normal_ sometimes. It can't only be that, can it?

"I often have sex with my uncle in the house," Min says, easily volunteering the carefully-picked non-lie to see what hyung will make of it. It would have been a lie before he met hyung, that _often_ instead of _always_. But sometimes he has sex with hyung and so now it is only an _often_. "It doesn't bother me if he overhears. I do apologise I got here so late."

Hyung's head drops with an exhale that makes his body sag. "You must consider yourself very close."

"We are." He considers it. "He adopted me late. He's always acted as a guardian, not a parent. So it's a little different."

"Not that different," Hyun says, and his face is so grim that Min is convinced that this is it, this is where it all falls apart. "Does he see how your nonexclusive treats you?"

"You have a very shallow view of my nonexclusive," Min says, forcing himself to be glib and cheerful, to keep smiling in the face of that _expression_. That look that says either he is pitying Min or he is afraid for him, which is even worse. Hyun has no right. "I think it is because of your suspicions."

Hyung gets up, then, and Min lifts his head, tracking him, until Hyun is looming with a face so blank Min doesn't know what he's meant not to see in it. "So how did he handle you? Did he handle you like this? Put that down."

Min puts his teacup on the tabletop, breath shallow with unknowing, and Hyun moves so fast Min's nerves twinge, so fast Min barely has his arm up when hyung takes it and rolls him over and presses him down onto his stomach, Min's arms folded behind his back. His hand feels absurdly large around Min's wrists.

"Did he do this to you?" Hyung says, straddling him, and Min feels him settle his weight, his back on the verge of popping, pelvis aching protest. "Did he hold you down? Did he fuck you like this?"

"Yes," Min mumbles, muffled by the couch's absurdly soft seat.

"Did you like it?"

He feels so twisted between trust and desire and the urge to buck him off and rake his fingers through his eye that he doesn't know how to pull a lie together. He could. He could, of course, but it makes him hard, having him on top of him, it makes him hard to struggle against his hand. "I would if you did."

Hyung exhales above him. It's shaky, long and hissing and awful to hear. "You didn't like it," he says. He sounds fragmented, words in pieces, like he's trying to space them together and not just in a run of syllables. "You didn't like it when he held you down and fucked you, and your uncle knew, he heard you and he didn't help you. You're not that quiet. Didn't he? He heard you."

He gets off Min, stumbling to the carpet with a strange, raw noise that could be a cracking joint or a grunt. Min sits up to watch him pace to the window, the table with the remnants of their breakfast, back to the window again.

There must be some point to this performance, and Min folds his legs under, wary of his mood, the way his shoulders are so tight. The distress in his flexing fingers.

"When did he adopt you? Your uncle."

Min considers him, his reaction. The way he still paces. What he asked, spread on top of him like that. "I don't think it's your place to disapprove of my uncle. A little bit rude, isn't it?" He pours tea again. "I didn't think you were that rude a person."

"I didn't know you were --" Hyun sighs. He's still so tense. "I see now. I did guess. No wonder you were so upset when I told you about the invitation, the house."

Min is utterly baffled. There is a connection here, some decision Hyun is making, but it doesn't make any sense to him that he's coming so close to the conclusion of _your uncle is your nonexclusive_ , and yet … doesn't. Has Min been that convincing? Does hyung just not want to admit the possibility to himself? "Your speculation really has nothing to do with me."

Hyung looks over at him, watching him. Min has no idea what he sees. He lowers his head and puts his hands in his pockets, shoulders falling out of their straight edges into a slouch. "No. No, I suppose you think it doesn't. If I wanted to meet your uncle again, what would you say?"

 _Don't_ , Min wants to say. _Please don't_. "I would say be careful, but it's not up to me what you do."

"Do you want me to meet him again?" Hyung sits down beside him and puts a hand on Min's ankle, his thumb warm on the bone. "Get to know him better? Learn more about him, where we might have known each other? I'm listening, Sun-ho. You should reciprocate with an honest answer. Do you think we should meet?"

"No," Min says, ill at ease. "If you -- he read your book, he is a fan, and that --" He struggles for the words, with not saying more than he can get away with. "He likes you."

Hyun looks at him. "I'm asking you because you know him better. You obviously know his interest me in better than I do. You should be honest again. Now that you know he is next door to my house, do you think I should move back in?"

Min hesitates. Joon-young will be _furious_. "No."

Hyung breathes out, long and slow, Min's throat a knot of tension. "All right. All right. I have membership with this hotel anyway," he tells Min. "It's not too expensive."

"Why do you believe me?" Min says, unwilling _not_ to ask. It would be that easy? How can it be so easy that hyung asks and _listens_ to the answers? It can't be. "I've hardly told you anything."

There's a long, soft quiet. "When the victim of that kind of person tells me not to have anything to do with that person, it's my responsibility to listen."

"I'm not his victim," Min says. It's laughable. It makes something nervous crawl in his body, a tingling around his knees that shifts his foot under hyung's hand and makes him curl his toes. "But you came to that on your own without evidence so of course your conclusion is absurd."

"You know criminal law better than I do, being a lawyer," Hyun says. "But that doesn't mean I haven't read it. Particularly the sections dealing with rape and sexual assault."

Min's mouth dries. He's not sure if he's offended. He should be, probably. It _isn't_ like that. It isn't. It's always been for Min's own good. Of course it is for his own good; that's the price Joon-young pays to put up with Min, his oldest and most expensive albatross. The one hyung gave him, lest he allow himself to forget. "That's a legal framework," he manages. "It's not relevant. There's no case or charge."

"Legal or not, this is the way I see it. You didn't want it. That's still assault and you just told me your uncle was an accessory. That _is_ being involved. So, when you tell me I should stay away from him, I will, and if there is anyone else like that, I would rather that you told me so I can stay away from them too."

Hyun can have his own silly opinions, his pathetic attempts at reducing the worth of things he knows nothing about. He knows who put him here, and it wasn't Joon-young.

Min feels as though he's about to cry, the strange sobbing jerks that Ja-hee does when her favourite shows end, and he doesn't understand. There's no point embarrassing himself over things that were settled a long time ago. "There's no reason for you to speculate."

"Sun-ho," hyung says, and he kisses Min's knee, looks up at him and rubs his ankle like it's made of glass, the movement of his thumb so, so delicate. He doesn't look angry or put off or like Min is untouchable. He just looks like he did in the shower when he told Min he could take his time. It's the same expression. "I pay attention to you. I've paid attention to you and the way you are about your nonexclusive, and your uncle, every time they come up when we talk. I have every reason to believe you."

Joon-young wouldn't say whatever Min gave away was any reason at all to believe Min, to think statutes of assault have anything to do with it, and it was Min's mistake to begin with. Joon-young has always done his best. Joon-young has always trusted him and listened to him and looked after him. There is no earthly reason why Min shouldn't defend him. If he doesn't defend him better than this, that is his own failure.

But Joon-young didn't tell Min about the house, and it's that thought he can't get rid of, that single insidious doubt that circles and circles and circles. Joon-young failed to tell him. Min didn't force him to keep a _house_ secret.

"You're mistaken about it all," Min says. "I consented." He blows out a breath. It doesn't make him sound any better. "Of course I consented. I wanted it, and naturally I consented. Obviously I've mistakenly given you the wrong impression. I apologise for misleading you. My uncle is really very kind to me. This is an error of your thinking," Min says, firm and final, and then his tongue is on the roof of his mouth and all he can do is breathe.

Hyun shakes his head. "Come here," he says, and Min goes, fumbling and shaken, his mind whirling, and kisses him awkwardly, the angle bad. Hyun pulls back, rubbing the tip of his nose. "You should accept that I have my own judgement on these things."

"As long as I don't have to make an itemised list of how wrong you are," Min says, more acidic than he means to be.

"You don't." He strokes his hand down Min's back, fingers finding his spine through the robe. "Can I trust that you consent to me?"

"Yes," Min says, quick and unthinking, and closes his hands over Hyun's elbows to stop him from pulling away. "Yes, I want you."

"After that conversation, it would be reasonable --"

Min pushes him back and interrupts him with a kiss as thoroughly and perfectly aligned as he can make it. "I'm not a reasonable person."

There's too much to think about. But not now and not with anyone there to see his face. Not even Joon-young. When he's alone he'll think about Hyun's perspective and how wrong it is. How wrong it must be. Only then.

"Slow down," Hyun says, jerking back and covering Min's mouth. "I wasn't asking for right away. I'm not that fast."

Min lets himself be guided down to hyung's lap, curling up on the absurd length of the seat and covering his legs. It's nice, once he's forced himself to relax his shoulders and lean into the meat of his thigh. "I thought you were supposed to be mentally flexible," he grumbles.

Hyung's laugh surprises him as much as the generous ruffle of his hand in Min's hair. "Don't complain for the sake of complaining. You're fine."

"Oh, well, if you say so," Min says, waspish.

"Do you say so?" Hyun asks, hand still carding through Min's hair. "If I asked you how you felt after that conversation, would you say you were fine? Answer me seriously."

Min considers it. He can answer seriously or honestly. He picks serious; it's what hyung asked for. "I want you to fuck me like that. I would like it if you did it."

Hyun's thumb strokes over his cheek. There's a look to him that says he knows what Min chose not to say. "Not today. Today I just want to touch you. Hear you. You liked when I held you down?"

"You like it too," Min says. Talking in person isn't any easier than over the phone, but at least he has hyung's touch. Hyung's touch is a good indicator of approval, as good as the slow thick of his cock against his temple. "If you turned me over right here, and tied my wrists together, and pushed me up against the windows --" He hesitates.

They're high up enough. Even if Joon-young carries binoculars, they're unlikely to be powerful enough to discern anything this high, even though he knows hyung's room number.

"Go on." It sounds heavy, thick, his hand weighty on his neck, and Min is bewildered all over again that hyung gives him this power.

"I'd like that," Min says. "If you tied me up and fucked me. You could guide me over and hold me up." His imagination is never good enough for the details hyung pulls out that make Min flush and scramble to finger himself, but hyung doesn't ever seem to mind. "So if they had a very good telephoto lens --"

Hyun laughs loudly enough that his thigh jerks under Min's cheek and interrupts him. "I'm not important enough for that," he says, and bends to kiss him.

"You are," Min says.

Hyung's face goes soft like Min is some sort of exceptional creature and not mediocre. It's uncomfortable enough that Min sets about distracting him, pushes him down to the seat and bites his thighs open from the knee up while he grips his hair and gasps. Even if they're not doing the window today, this is good too. Hyung is sexy like this too.

***

Min arrives at seven past eight and Chun-seok is already in Attorney Kang's office, visible through the blinds.

"Jesus _fuck_ ," someone else motivated enough to brownnose at this hour says from behind their monitor, shamelessly gawking. "I'm so glad it's not me."

Attorney Kang is leaning out of her chair, crisp and gesturing, and Chun-seok is obviously distraught, turning away with his hands over his face and halfway into his hair.

Min sits down, slowly, at his desktop. There's a feeling in him, a new one, a different one, that isn't quite like what Joon-young says is shame but close to it. He wonders what hyung would think of Chun-seok if they met. Chun-seok is dogged but not intuitively clever the way hyung likes people to be. But if Chun-seok told him what Min did, hyung would disapprove. Wouldn't he? He would tell hyung, if he met him. Not at first. But he would tell him that Sun-ho stole his case from him.

Min thinks about the way Chun-seok told him not to hand over his career in the stairwell. How he'd gripped his arms and frowned up at him. Refusing the responsibility. Refusing the risk. So --

He grapples with the idea of owing anyone that isn't Joon-young. Most everyone owes him -- of course they do. Min sees to that. Joon-young recommends it as a way of socialising and it's good advice. Everyone ought to owe him more than he owes them. That's the way it ought to be. But Chun-seok didn't get anything out of refusing. Min did. Didn't he? He got something out of Chun-seok being Chun-seok, who is a venal fool with an idea of himself as a good person, and as a good person there are things he absolutely wouldn't do, things Min absolutely _would_ because he is not a person like Chun-seok.

Perhaps there is a way to stop owing Chun-seok, and have Chun-seok owe him again. That would be better.

The case folders are still tucked in the locked drawer under his desk because he had them last, and he takes them out, pages through the red-tabbed folder. This is Chun-seok's evidence, Chun-seok's handwriting tabulating the dates. Min can win the case. But perhaps, if he tells Attorney Kang that it is _because_ of Chun-seok that he can, perhaps if he tells her that to win it, he will still need Chun-seok as co-attorney because it is Chun-seok's work, Chun-seok's case, then perhaps Chun-seok will owe him again and if hyung ever meets Chun-seok, Chun-seok will not have something to tell hyung that hyung will disapprove of him for.

However much Min wants it to be his. Winning this alone would make it his, a nod of credit to Chun-seok or not. An office. He would like that, to be in an office on his own.

But there are two-person offices, and they are available more often, and he's not sure he would mind sharing with Chun-seok. It would annoy him. Everyone annoys him. But he pictures Chun-seok being in the same room and it is only a mild irritation. Besides, there are cases and clients. It wouldn't be all the time.

Chun-seok brings him the bad coffee he knows about when he sees Min. Min could tell him where the machine is when they move it, and Chun-seok could bring him _good_ coffee instead.

He pictures Chun-seok having good things to say about Min. Introducing them and Chun-seok praising him to hyung. If he does this right, he could have all that. The office and the positive introduction and a correct balance of favours.

When he thinks it through that way it sounds better than having the case to his own. More beneficial in the short and long term.

Min pulls together the files he pruned from the folder he would have used to prove he could take it solo, the files full of things that were entirely Chun-seok's doing, not theirs together, and mixes them back in. It looks better this way. More convincing.

He gets up from his computer, not bothering to pretend he turned it on to begin with, and he knocks on Attorney Kang's door then enters after waiting just long enough to pretend there was an acknowledgement.

Chun-seok looks up from leaning against her desk, face wrinkled tight, his eyes red. Attorney Kang doesn't look pleased either. "Don't barge in, kid."

"It just became difficult, didn't it?" Min says. "If I can help, I would be glad to."

"Glory hound," Chun-seok says. He looks weary. "Did you plan this?"

"I just heard." Min's not quite sure what to say. "I have assisted with the case," he says to Attorney Kang. "If I can help, then --" He breaks off, shrugs.

"This just became nigh on fucking unwinnable," she says. She sounds as weary as Chun-seok looks. "Either you're reckless or you think you're helping, but if you take it, it won't just sink him, it'll sink you."

Min gives the pretense of thinking about it. "That's fine," he says brightly, uncomfortable with the lack of goodwill from Chun-seok.

He's so used to Chun-seok smiling and being present, being a person at Min, and now he isn't. He's just there like a lump and it's throwing Min off terribly. He should have expected Chun-seok would be upset. He did expect it. But he didn't think it would be like this.

"I am fine with responsibility. Chun-seok and I, together, I think we can still give a good defense. There are statements and recordings. Surely her word is still valuable? We'll have to share credit, but that should be fine, shouldn't it? We were co-attorneys in all but name. It may as well be official."

"I'll leave it up to you," Attorney Kang says to Chun-seok.

Chun-seok looks at him. Min doesn't know what he expects to see. He doesn't know what to show him, so he just keeps the same smile he uses to sound cheerful and capable.

"Okay," he says. "We'll go down together, but okay. I'll do it with him."

"Are you sure?" she says to Min, and Min hands her the folder.

"All right. Good. It's thin evidence, but it'll pull together if you work hard. Start now," Attorney Kang says. "The witnesses might have more evidence that will help us. Work with the police and see what you can do about the dead one. See if she has more she didn't give us. Go on."

She throws them out with raised eyebrows and Min has to drag Chun-seok by the elbow, guiding him out of her office and closing the door behind them.

"Why are you like this?" Chun-seok mumbles. "I can't win now. I know I can't. She had a -- she was perfect. She was connected, she knew him, she was present, she was, they would have listened to her --"

"You can't win it. I can," Min says. He knows he can. "That's why."

That same uneasy feeling is still there in his stomach after all this time. He didn't mean this complication, it just happened. It's hardly his fault. He meant it when he asked Joon-young to kill Seung-hoon for him, but he didn't mean this to come of forgetting about Seung-hoon. This isn't his fault, but it's his mistake too for letting Chun-seok get one over him.

"Jesus, you're an asshole," Chun-seok sighs, dragging a hand down the side of his face, nails leaving red furrows on his cheek. "Let's take over one of the grand empties until the cops can tell us whatever it is they'll bother to tell us."

"Either come in or go away," Attorney Kang shouts.

Chun-seok takes a deep breath. "That poor bitch. I'll get the physicals. You go get the login. And coffee. Fuck, you're an asshole. You knew I wouldn't say no. You've done half the work on this already, who else could do it in time? You just waltzed in and you fucking -- you fucking asshole. I was supposed to get a promotion. I was supposed to get _an office_."

"I thought you'd be happy," Min says, uncomfortable with his own sincerity and the suspicion that he's got it wrong somehow. He thought Chun-seok would be grateful. Pleased.

"Happy?" Chun-seok shoves him, but not hard enough to tip him. More a slap of his palms against Min's chest. "There's no reason to be happy about this, asshole. Our key witness is dead and I've gone from the lead and this case having my name on it to your fucking hanger-on. How can I be happy?"

Min wonders if Chun-seok's just not hearing things very well. "I could have asked for the whole case," he says stiffly. "I was going to ask for it. You should be glad I didn't."

He makes the same face he does when Prosecutor Su stands at the end of his row and farts. "I'm supposed to be happy you pity me?"

"That isn't how you're supposed to take it." Min hesitates at the rise of his eyebrows, but Chun-seok only gestures for him to go on. He squares his shoulders. "I assisted you. I am still assisting." There's no change in Chun-seok's face and there's a bubbling sort of panic in Min's chest. "An office with me is still an office, isn't it?"

Chun-seok folds his arms, hands tucked against his jacket. "Asshole. Are you saying you'd share?"

Min blinks, then consults his memory of the conversation. He still doesn't understand. He's missing something. He keeps talking in hopes it'll make itself obvious. "Assisting in the case also means assisting in the reward. It usually works like that."

Chun-seok's face relaxes. "You mean it, don't you?" He squints. "You mean you'll _actually_ co-lead and you'll _actually_ share. You're not just making fun of me."

Min would have last year. Even a few months ago. Taunted him with exactly this. But now he means it and it's viscerally uncomfortable how much. He doesn't want hyung to be disappointed in him. He doesn't want to owe Chun-seok. "You did me a favour and I am repaying it."

"For what?"

Min keeps the bright, cheerful smile fixed to his mouth and waits.

"Oh. Oh, look, you don't have to --"

Min interrupts, unwilling to tolerate any more disquieting _generosity_ that he doesn't _understand_. He's had his fill. Enough. "Isn't there a proverb for this, something to do with gift horses?"

"Okay, okay." Chun-seok smiles for the first time all morning, and Min feels the small of back unwind in an abrupt exhale, his stomach settling. "Okay. But you get me coffee today, and you get the files _and_ the laptop and I'll go get conference room four or five. Okay?"

Min nods and for once immediately does as Chun-seok tells him. Fetching coffee and a laptop is better than the way Chun-seok looks at him, puzzled and smiling faintly, like Min is someone he doesn't recognise.

***

Joon-young sighs and looks at him, hazily overcast, when Min comes home. "Min."

He's the only who calls Min that name anymore, will likely be the only one forever now that things are the way they are, and fresh hatred chokes him, turns his voice into a foreign meanness he would normally never dare. "You're drunk."

"Clever little Min." Joon-young pours himself another drink, sloppy and filling the glass two-thirds full. "I've done so much for you."

"I know," Min says, taking off his shoes and hanging his coat, loosening his tie. Joon-young hates ties. "But you're still drunk."

"I am," Joon-young says. He sits up, lists, and manages to lean against the back of the couch. The bottle of champagne has a quarter left.

Min fills the water glass beside it and pushes it toward Joon-young. "What's the occasion?" He doesn't drink often that Min knows of, always says it would be too easy and then who would take care of Min, but when he does he drinks until his eyes cross and he wets himself vomiting.

"Your brother," Joon-young slurs, "closed up the house again. He took his things. Packed them up and took them away. It's empty again, like he never came." He frowns into his glass. "I hoped we would talk. I thought he would want to hear what I had to say. Was I not interesting enough? How would that be?"

Min kneels down in front of him, anger ebbing. Joon-young drunk is so tiresome and pitiful. "You're going to have a hangover."

The first time Joon-young was this drunk was when Min was about ten. He came home from school to Joon-young sitting on the floor, drinking out of a bottle, staring at the switched-off television Joon-young borrowed from the neighbours in exchange for fixing their toilet. He looked up at Min when he came in and said, _saw a documentary.  I thought, 'I could do that'. Only thought that about murder before. But I can do that. I want to_ , and then he was weeping, great horrible sobs Min never saw before or since, shaking enough to static his hair against the newspapers on the floor.

It was awful to see him then. It's awful to see him now. He's not weeping, but Min doesn't know what makes Joon-young weep other than realising he wants things. "Drink the water."

Having Joon-young here is hard. Hyung was here too, and for all that Joon-young got him the place it still feels like he's intruding, reminding him of hyung's hope and Joon-young's certain lack of it and the way they both rest on Min as though Min is something other than a man with a crack in him so deep he can't see it himself. He resents it. He resents all of it, both of them.

He meant to sit with a drink and his laptop and -- think, and catch up on work, and think. About what hyung said, and what it might mean. About Chun-seok and the case and what friendship looks like when Min wants it. He didn't mean for Joon-young to get drunk on his couch.

It's hard to look at Joon-young, hazy and lax as he is. He wants Min to be his Min, the same trusting, stupid, pathetic child. He wants Min not to care about things Joon-young doesn't care about. He wants Min to care about Joon-young despite the fact that Joon-young doesn't.

The tension of maybe not having hyung anymore, losing him again anyway if Joon-young is still grumpy enough tomorrow to seek him out more aggressively, makes the muscles behind his eyebrows start to ache. Min is sick of this.

Such a smooth face Joon-young turns to Min now, one that might be interpreted as concern if the viewer would like to give the benefit of the doubt. Min has no room in him for the benefit of the doubt, not anymore and not for Joon-young. He has suspicions and he has wounds and above all he has the knowledge that there is not enough of him for both of them. He feels overstretched and not at all capable. He doesn't want Joon-young here. He doesn't want him here drunk, doesn't want to look at his face. He's sick of this and he's tired of him. Min goes upstairs and leaves him to his own devices. He can piss himself on his own.

Min takes his phone and a second bottle to bed, waiting in his underwear, his head propped at an exact angle on a pillow. He doesn't want to be sober.

There are things Joon-young always wants after he's cleaned up and brushed his teeth. The first time he was just rough, fumbling and humping as he continued to cry, his tongue on Min's stomach afterwards, and he never mentioned it again. He still never does, and Min is careful not to think of this as sex. It isn't sex the way he's used to thinking of Joon-young and sex, even with his creativity lately. It's something else. Hyung might know if Min asked him. He puts that thought aside. Hyung doesn't belong here.

Min pours another glass, then another, carbonation going to his head and fuzzing the feeling of his eyelashes touching his cheeks. He doesn't say anything when Joon-young climbs in on his preferred side, only puts his phone on the nightstand face down beside the empty bottle and says nothing when Joon-young presses a mint-and-metal wet kiss to his mouth.

Neither of them ever do speak. Min wonders, sometimes, if he did say something, if Joon-young would remember. He's almost sure Joon-young has no idea he does this. He's almost sure Joon-young would try to stop if he did know.

But he doesn't, and Min lies there, feeling him sway and struggle and press his cock against his briefs, how he lies atop him and holds him down with his full weight, alcohol and mint in Min's face and the slow, struggling, rock of his body, slurred like all his movements, the vacant lack of focus in his hanging jaw and wandering eyes.

Joon-young has such strong hands, and usually they're delicate. Usually Joon-young is sure of himself. He's used to a sure touch. But it doesn't matter once Joon-young palm flattens to his throat and squeezes. It's hard for him to get a good grip with Min's head at this angle, but it's enough, still, to hurt.

Min wonders as the spots gather, his lips too big to stay shut and his tongue much too enormous to stay in his mouth, the feeling of his hands shifting from pain to an emptiness of pressure, survival taking over despite himself as it always does, struggling fruitlessly as he always does, Joon-young's cock fat and sliding wet against his, if hyung will miss him after Joon-young kills him.

Joon-young doesn't that first time. He doesn't the time he pulls Min's cock out of his underwear and strokes him hard meanwhile. He doesn't the next, either, when he's rutting on him, sloppily kissing his cheek and jaw, his grip shifting enough to make Min's head swim and his cock confused and his body pliant and tense by turns.

The way Joon-young looks, glazed and urgent, something in him alight when he looks at Min, is his _I enjoy this_ face. It shows up in certain flavours of dragon's beard candy and it shows up when there's no breeze and Min wearies of peeling his sticky summer-tanned thighs off Joon-young's. It's the face he gets when he remembers something about his childhood he liked and when he finishes reading one of hyung's books and when he recreates what his uncles did to him, over and over.

Usually Min falls asleep first. He's never had any tolerance for champagne and this time is no exception, dozing off in the midst of wondering if he remembered to set his alarm and Joon-young drooling kisses on his shoulder.

***

"We drank far too much," Joon-young says, and Min blinks, rolling over and rubbing at his sore throat. He never remembers much after the first few squeezes, and even that is undefined now. He remembers it being so clear at the time, and now he has no idea what was so clear. It's always the same. There's no point in clarity.

"We did," Min says, testing his voice carefully. Fine. A little rough, his head jerking back to finish a cautious attempt at swallowing, but fine, and he stretches his fingers, his head aching worse than last night, enough that the sunlight forces him to squeeze his dry eyes shut. "Is there water?"

Joon-young shifts on the bed beside him and helps Min sit up. He's been careful about it since the time he forced Min upright too fast and Min was sick all over the bed. The ritual of his hands under his shoulders, Min clinging to his arms and slowly hauling himself upright, is a comfort.

He sips from the glass Joon-young holds for him, hating the taste of his own tongue. He doesn't know how bad the petechiae are this time, how widespread. Hyung will notice. Min needs a mirror but not while Joon-young is here. "Time?"

Joon-young checks the face of his watch. He always has a watch. Once he said he was glad hyung had a clock in the room their father put him in. "Twenty to six. How do you feel?"

It's a relief Joon-young is calm again. A calm drunk Joon-young is easier than a turbulent one who makes petechiae the least of Min's concerns. "I have a headache," Min says. "Why were you drinking?"

Joon-young puts his back against the headboard, kicking off his slippers. "I heard something interesting from Min-jee. You saw her yesterday. Around six."

Ah. The spy in the hotel. Min shrugs. The best tactic, as always, is not to lie to Joon-young. "I stayed over. He doesn't have any friends. Isn't that odd? Surely he has some."

"Your brother went directly from the hotel to packing his things." Joon-young fills the water glass and holds it for Min to drink from, then puts it away.

There's something wrong with Joon-young's tone. "We had breakfast and I went to work," Min offers.

His hand settles on Min's shoulder. It feels nowhere near as good as hyung's. "Be careful not to be a friend. His friends owe favours."

"I haven't asked anything from him," Min says. "Because I am not a friend."

Joon-young nods. "You should get up. You have calls."

Min reaches for his phone, fingertips scrabbling on the upturned face, and scrolls through notifications. The latest is a text from David Lee Hyun. _Dinner tonight?_

The bare skin of his arms and neck prickles. Joon-young beside him. Joon-young waiting. Joon-young. Min replies with a refusal.

"Good," Joon-young says, and smooths the nape of Min's neck with a careful hand, strokes his thumb over his airway and rests it there. "Good."


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated the tags for this one to more accurately reflect the content of this entire fic. A lot of Eun-bok in this one! Unfortunately that also comes with explicit and implicit discussion of some very coercive dynamics. Please take care.

He rejects Joon-young's offer of dinner and texts Eun-bok for soju that night, knowing Joon-young is watching him.

"I see," Joon-young says, and leans over his shoulder, a careless, crooked smile on his face as he meets Min's eyes. "I see indeed. Very well."

Min is pushed back down and Min goes with his hands, his head throbbing, his mouth dry, his eyes stinging when he blinks. He reminds himself that Joon-young is not sober. He reminds himself that the tackiness between his cheeks means Joon-young has fucked him already.

"I do like that one," Joon-young says. He straddles Min's knees, smooths his hands up his thighs to his hips, and his thumbs shift beneath Min's balls, touching him in a way singularly arousing and uncomfortable. It's unusual to be touched without gloves. Bare skin is hyung's domain. But he's always liked Joon-young's eyes on him. Always. "He's a good child. But I shouldn't have favourites."

"I thought I was your favourite," Min says.

"Naturally," Joon-young says, so easy it makes something curl terrified in Min's gut. "Of course you are. My Min." He lifts a hand and pushes it through the hair at Min's temple, his thumb brushing Min's eyebrow. His palm looks deceptively soft. "You really should know that. Has someone been telling tales? You should tell me if someone has. I'll deal with them for you."

He sounds so _pleased_ with Min, in a way he hasn't been for a long time, and it makes Min want to shove him off and scream. "No. Uncle, do you not trust me anymore?"

"Why would you say that?" He rolls to his side beside Min, lying lax and humane, a man in bed with his lover like a painting of skin tones and blocky swathes of colour, how the sheets show white beneath their fleshy bodies. Min could paint it. He could paint exactly that, and they would just -- look like two men, more or less, in bed together. He could paint exactly that, call it _The Lovers_ , and it would be thought mildly transgressive and unfit for open viewing. Nothing but placid, bland exoticism, and they wouldn't think to look closer.

Min would paint himself posed like Renaissance women chained to rocks, heads turned away from seas and eagles and gods even as their hair flagged red to skies painted navy and bice, and no-one would think anything of it.

There is no truth there in the end. Now, the works of heads and men, clothed polycephalic men -- _those_ they would think of, if they knew. Min wonders if hyung's seen the one Joon-young said he put in Kang Ji-seo's flat yet. If he noticed it. If he remembers it the way he doesn't remember Min.

"Hyung said -- he wanted to know if I knew you. He said you had him to tea. At your house. Next to his. Uncle, you live _next door_. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Oh, didn't I?" Joon-young makes a face like a second lead considering whether to date the love interest. "Well, if I didn't, I'm sure I had a reason." He smiles kindly. "Does it really matter so much?"

"Does it -- of course it does, uncle. You didn't tell me."

"Ah," Joon-young says. "You think I should tell you everything?"

Even in this state Min knows it's a trap. "If you do things like this, I should know. It was my home once. You keep yours. You should tell me what -- what you do with mine. Or near mine. You should tell me when you buy a house." He breathes out in the face of Joon-young's smile. "You should."

"Well, clearly I didn't think so." Joon-young smiles again. "I question very few of your activities, Min. You should leave me some too."

"But you bought a house," Min says, and even to his own ears he is whining. "You bought the house next door."

"They took my offer," Joon-young says easily, so easily. "Very fortunate for me. It's a good house."

Min feels wretched and small. "Is it where you live now?"

"Why shouldn't I live in my house?" Joon-young grins, crinkling easily around the eyes. "You know how I like a garden."

"I know." Joon-young and his damned pots everywhere. He knows. But he doesn't know what to say next, and he draws his knees to his chest, away from Joon-young. "Do you have time?"

Joon-young tilts his head, smoothing the skin over the top of Min's foot to his toes. "For the garden or for you right now?"

"Both," Min says.

"Yes, I do. Time management is a useful skill for an examiner with a gardening hobby." He shifts closer, settles with his hand wrapped around the back of Min's thigh, stroking up and down and setting goosebumps on his arms. "What do you want, Min?"

He wants hyung. He wants Joon-young to get out. He wants Joon-young to take all of these thoughts away. Only one of these things is possible. "Can you get it up?"

"So crude," Joon-young says, and reaches across him to the nightstand, pulling out gloves and lube. There are so many things he only does when he is drunk, like closing his hand around Min's neck or playing with him when he puts in his fingers. Min's always liked this part a little too much, this rub of thumb and forefinger against his rim, feeling the pinch, the thoughtful lack of expression on Joon-young's face. His finger moves like there's all the room inside Min that Joon-young could possibly want, and for a moment Min wishes it could be true.

Two fingers and and the thumb together go easily enough, duck-beaked inside him, that Min is absolutely sure Joon-young fucked him after he stopped fighting it. The press of his knuckles is so unfairly good that Min bites at his wrist, restless, every heavy breath a rasp against the swollen ache in his throat. "Do you feel ready?" Joon-young asks him, pulling out his fingers, smearing them carelessly on Min's thigh. Not sober. Min has to keep that in mind. Not deeply drunk, but not sober.

Min nods, pulls his arm away from his mouth when Joon-young waits. "Yes."

He makes a shocked, involuntary noise when Joon-young holds him open with his thumb and pushes in without so much as reaching for a condom. "Uncle." Min doesn't think he's ever -- not while Min knows he's doing it. That's for certain. He pushes at his chest, breath stuttering. "Uncle!"

 _It's not for you_ , he wants to scream. _It's not for you_.

Min thought, maybe -- he thought -- for hyung. For hyung, he would offer, before he went, and hyung would have him --

He hasn't thought it through. He thought he would have time to think it through. He thought he would have it to think through at all.

Joon-young knocks his arm away and leans over, pushing up Min's knees, and the heat of his own gasp is painful. Joon-young pushes in his cock and grabs his face with his wet-gloved fingers. He can smell his own shit. It's disgusting. "Is there someone I should know, Min?"

"No," Min says vehemently. Joon-young should _never_ know about hyung.

"You ask for so different things these days," Joon-young says, musing and thoughtful, and Min clutches at him. He can't help it -- the way he pushes in, how it drives his hips down so far it hurts, of course he wants more of it. That he also wants to slit his throat is a different matter. "So I wonder if it is something you are watching or reading. If it is someone telling you these things."

"Are you _jealous_?" Min spits, his limbs heavy, his head weightless in throbbing headache and fury.

Joon-young pauses, owlish as though it's never occurred to him, and Min nearly chokes on the suffocating mix of lust and pity that rises in his throat like bile. "Am I?"

"There's nothing to be jealous of," Min forces out past all the things he wants to say that Joon-young will never forgive. "I just -- it's a natural -- to seek variety. To --" He licks his lips, the pressure of Joon-young's bodyweight agonising on his hips.

"Were you bored?" Joon-young asks him, like this concept is as startling as the other, and Min can't help laughing. How Min hates him sometimes. He hates him.

"Of course, Uncle," Min says, his head _pounding_ the way Joon-young isn't, and he shuts his eyes. "People get drunk after work. They talk about their wives. They talk about sex. You know I'm a curious person."

"Then this is okay, right?" He brushes his mouth against Min's, notices the glove and tears it off, an affronted pull to his eyebrows, and leans back to Min's ear, Min's jaw. "We are … what is the word now. Bonded."

"Sharing intestinal parasites is your abnormal definition of bonding, not mine," Min says viciously.

Joon-young sighs. "Not on the account of what _I_ make you. It will not harm your chances to do it again," pitying, a scold that makes Min flush. Again. So he did. Min is objecting to decisions Joon-young has already made, and Joon-young expects him to know better. Min does know better.

Min shuts his eyes again. It feels good when Joon-young finally gets around to fucking him. He almost never has Min face to face like this, _close_ like this, with Joon-young's breath on his eyelids and a rhythm that rattles the bed and forces Min to brace his shoulders into the mattress. Almost never, but it feels good. It's good. It still feels good.

He wanted it for hyung, is the thing. He wanted it to be hyung inside him with this not-smoothness. It's something people talk about as trust, and Min wanted to give it to hyung.

It wasn't Joon-young's to take. But if not Joon-young, then why hyung? It might as well be Joon-young, if Joon-young has already. It might as well just -- be something else between them. It is.

None of it makes him hate Joon-young any less, and he comes when Joon-young strokes his cock, thinking of how he might look hung and dead and spinning with a post-mortem erection jutting out with no-one to touch it except rats to chew on him. It's a good image. Min likes it. He might paint it and give it to Joon-young as a gift.

Joon-young draws out and comes half inside him, and Min has to struggle to only claw at his pillow and not his self-satisfied _smug_ face when he sits back on his knees, breathing hard and smiling. "This is good," he reports, reaching, and the feeling of his thumb and forefinger again makes Min's stomach lurch.

He's rubbing his come inside him, more or less, playing with it, studying between his legs with that abstracted expression that comes of something he likes very much, and when he did it before, that was the same, wasn't it? It was his come inside Min. It wasn't _Min_ he was playing with, just himself.

Min wonders how many times he doesn't know about, how many times Joon-young was drunk enough to fuck him without but not too drunk to clean up.

He is going to paint him dead and chewed by rats and he is going to _giftwrap_ it and he'll -- he will --

Min won't.

He sags, anger thick and useless. He knows he won't.

It's a fantasy, like having hyung kneeling there touching his come inside him instead. It always was a fantasy, wretched and pathetic of him to even think it. Joon-young likely had it long before Min figured out it was something he could want to give.

He swallows hard as Joon-young pulls away with the serene expression of managing to raise a difficult orchid. Min doesn't know what there is for Joon-young to be proud of.

"You should get up," Joon-young tells him, patting his knee. "I'll make something nice. Nothing to give you any intestinal parasites." He hums. "I have to refresh my memory of those. I want to look after you properly. Wash your face too. It's contaminated."

***

"Don't tell me because you're sorry about this," Chun-seok says, gesturing to the scatter that happens whenever Chun-seok is nearby however much Min tries to impress on him that it would be easier if he kept his shit _organised_ like Min's tabs intend. "Not because of this."

Min stares at him. Chun-seok is a greedy little man, in the normal vein of things. Greedy for gossip and greedy for woes to turn into jokes and laugh at. Min's heard him, drank with him at office outings and team soju nights. "Then why should I tell you?"

"Because you would like to tell a friend," Chun-seok says, as though he is very clever.

"You have a big mouth," Min says.

"Not for you. You'd turn me inside out with your eyes or something. You know I don't spread your shit around." He whistles through his teeth when the intranet finally loads, then pauses. "I forgot what we want."

  
"You're useless." Today it feels mild, like Eun-bok's old habit of putting only half a packet into ramyun. Min doesn't know how to temper himself. Either he constructs himself as pleasant or he is someone they dislike. It's odd to find himself being pleasant to Chun-seok. Chun-seok can't give him anything worth the effort. "Give it to me."

He passes the laptop over and stretches back in his chair, irksomely unoffended. "So if I'm a friend, what were you going to say?"

Min looks at him, his lolling head and yawn-stretched mouth, the wrinkle of his eyes. It's still so strange to think of Chun-seok as being _anything_ other than someone who owes him. But he's fixed the imbalance and Chun-seok owes him again, and it should be simple, but it isn't. It's still complicated. Is it being complicated a mark of friendship, or only deeper acquaintance? Where do people draw these lines and how?

And why. He doesn't understand _why_ it matters so much. Chun-seok should just be Chun-seok, not asking him things that make his headache worse.

"Is it normal to meet someone and feel differently about the person you already had?"

Chun-seok leans forward. "Is there _drama_ in the life of the high and mighty asshole? Really?"

Min shakes his head, tapping his fingers. These crime scene files take forever to load now that the department updated their fidelity requirements. Going from overheads to digital files requires more pixels, apparently. "I don't know why I'm bothering to tell you anything."

"Of course it's normal," Chun-seok says. "How do you think we get so many revenge for cheating cases? Old relationship not up to scratch?"

Min doesn't touch his neck. "Something like that."

"You know…" Chun-seok makes a thinking noise, a noise of the specific late-night variety over a frustrating case, the collar of his shirt dirty and his desk littered with half-empty coffee cups leaving rings on the paperwork. But it's not quite midday, the conference room lights recently replaced and bright, and there are paths through this case.

"What?" Min asks when the silence stretches too long for him to tolerate.

"It's weird to think of you in a relationship," Chun-seok says. "You're such an asshole. I don't know who'd put up with you. It'd have to be someone special, right? But you're saying there's _two_ people who put up with you."

"You put up with me," Min says, just to watch Chun-seok scowl. "They're special, I know that. But -- the new one, he --"

Chun-seok clicks his tongue and gestures to the closed door, raising his eyebrows in a display of utter failure at stealth.

"They," Min says, raising an eyebrow right back, "are suggesting a new perspective on the current relationship. It's not comfortable."

"They forget you have feelings, don't they? The current one, he -- uh, they -- they forget, right?"

Min stares at him over the screen, surprised into a frown.

"I forget too," Chun-seok says. "It's easier to call you an asshole all the time than watch you stand around zoned out and upset. I don't think I really thought you had feelings before that. Not feelings feelings like normal people." He holds up his hands, defensive in his seat. Min doesn't know what his face looks like to make Chun-seok react like that. "Don't stab me! You asked!"

Min has to curl his hand into a careful fist to stop himself from tugging at his tie. "I won't," he says, and clears his throat. "I won't stab you for that."

"Oh, how reassuring," Chun-seok complains. "That's really helpful and not threatening at all, asshole."

Min feels his mouth twitch upward. "Happy to help."

Chun-seok leans forward, tie flopping against the tabletop. "Am I in the right district, though?"

"I'm not sure they ever cared," Min says, and it feels like retching, like regurgitation. He can't unclench his hand. "I used to think so but I'm not sure right now."

"Really? That sucks," Chun-seok says.

Oddly it makes him feel better. _That sucks_. How simple. But it helps, against all logic. "Enough of me," Min says. "What about you?"

"Oh no," Chun-seok wails. "Why do you have to turn it on me? Listen, I'm a very eligible catch! It's not my fault!"

"Your car is ugly," Min says, something in him easing, and he can bring himself to type again. "That might be a factor."

"It's a custom paintjob! It's _expensive_."

"It's an ugly custom paintjob," Min says. "You paid too much." He considers. "For the paint and for the car."

Chun-seok sputters. "It's -- listen, you _asshole_ \--"

Min thinks to himself that he likes this. It was a good choice to keep Chun-seok, approved by Joon-young or not. It was a good choice. He forgot he was capable of those. It's nice to have the reminder.

***

Min meets Eun-bok after work in one of the soju bars Joon-young hates -- quiet, full of plastic-surfaced tables and sticky glasses and one or two staff working overtime with textbooks open in front of them.

Eun-bok, as ever, is smooth-faced and reserved and in Min's opinion like making conversation with a walking fistful of razors. But hyung was made not to be an option and therefore neither is Joon-young, and so here he is with an excuse for not staying at home and eating Joon-young's dinner. At least the menu has good soju, and Min agrees when Eun-bok asks him to split the cost.

"Why did you want to drink together?" Min asks him.

Eun-bok pours for both of them. "Why do you think? The task force. Your friend Yang. His death was decided to be part of a series of murders yesterday."

"Was it," Min says, and drains his shot. "There's no need to talk to me about that."

"It was a lot of work," Eun-bok says, mild, "to erase you from his recent records. You shouldn't speak to me this way, hyung."

"Don't call me that." He pours this time, uninterested in prolonging this. It's going to be difficult enough as it is to extract himself without leaving all his secrets behind; drawing this out is only going to make it harder. "Tell me why and I'll leave."

"Has the old man been treating you well?" Eun-bok meets his eyes. There is something about dealing with Eun-bok that makes Min feel like a spoiled, whining eight-year-old. He hates it.

"Why would you ask me that?"

"Your concealer's wearing off," Eun-bok says, lifting a finger to point at Min's cheek. "That's a lot of broken capillaries."

"I rubbed too hard while I was thinking," Min says.

Eun-bok drains his shot. "You're lying, hyung."

Min sighs. If Joon-young is closemouthed, so is Eun-bok. "It's not your business. I'm leaving."

"The Planning Officer for my team," Eun-bok says before Min can get up, "is Hyun Ji-soo, and she is the least of my problems." Eun-bok's expression doesn't change as he fills his glass. "The least. You are not having a worse month than I am. Did you get that spider on your face from him?"

They don't talk about this. They have _never_ talked about this. Min feels wrongfooted, overhead lights too bright and soju too heavy in his mouth. "It's still not your business," Min says, scrambling for defense. It's too exposed. He's never told anyone about the nights Joon-young gets drunk. It's a rare event besides.

"I just told you why it is," Eun-bok says, infuriatingly calm. "Are you still sleeping with him?"

Min scowls at him, trying to calm his pulse out of panic. "I'm not interested in your disapproval."

Eun-bok raises his eyebrows, face still so smooth he may as well be a painting. "I've never asked you to be interested in me, hyung."

"I've never been," he snaps. "You're not my type."

He inclines his head. "Like I said. Seriously though, the spider?"

Min scowls harder. "What, are you concerned now?"

"There are things I could have done that I didn't have to do, hyung," Eun-bok says. "I've been working my way up through the police force. That takes money and education. Some of that money came from you because you were with him. The old man was clear about that."

That hurts, of all things. It sounds so -- so --

"Why does everyone insist on making it sound _sordid_?" Min snaps, frustrated with hyung and Eun-bok and Joon-young. "We're just -- we -- you wouldn't understand."

Eun-bok levels a look at him that could wither rosehips and much more confident men than Min. "Don't I?"

It brings to mind memories of the surgeries, as Min knows Eun-bok intended. The surgeries after adult men tore him open. The recovery, the pain amelioration, the effort it took to keep him only at dependence and not addiction. The costs of it, how he wobbled and struggled. The scars that crawl up his thighs and terminate in the small of his back and frame the pebbled spaces between those scars and the ones on his hips.

For all his difficulties with Joon-young, Joon-young's never hurt him so badly. Joon-young never would do such a thing to Min.

"It's not like that," Min says. "Don't compare us."

Eun-bok exhales. "Hyung, my team is full of people who resent him or will if they learn bad information. They could turn this investigation into investigating him if I fail to steer them correctly. You might make it more difficult for me. Or you might not. I need a hint either way."

Min puts his hand to his neck, stuck, his eyes watering unexpectedly. They water so often these days, what with hyung and Joon-young and this ridiculous farcical friendship or whatever it is with Chun-seok. It's different from Seung-hoon somehow. That one -- he just wanted to complain, as though there was something between them that he could grow from the top down, no soil or connection required. Chun-seok's proven himself, more or less, to be equally foolish but kind. It's nothing like Min's ever had.

He's just adrift, these days. That's the right word. Adrift. Not untethered. He knows his tethers, more or less. But adrift. Too much slack in the ropes between him and Joon-young, between him and hyung. Too much thinking.

Min might as well answer. "I don't plan to make it more difficult."

Eun-bok has the decency to refill his shot rather than reply and Min downs it, beginning to feel numb in his nose and extremities, beginning to think of words as sounds with extensions tacked on. His language goes to shit when he's drunk. It's why it's easier to say nothing with Joon-young when they're both drunk. He might say something he thinks. He might say something Joon-young will make him regret.

But Eun-bok just looks at him, and Min sees him but also the child he was and the adult he became. There's a good chance that if he did tell Eun-bok about last night, he would understand. It feels odd to think of anyone in the world ever understanding. "He meant me to eat with him tonight. Meeting you is an excuse." Min finishes his glass, sucking a drop of soju off his lip.

"For what?" Eun-bok asks.

Min exhales. It feels good on his overheated lips, cooling them down, and he licks at the sensation. "I didn't want him to touch me."

There's something horrible about the way Eun-bok looks at him. Like this is something to pity. Like this is something to share between them rather than something he really shouldn't have said. Min snarls and busies himself pouring another shot.

"He'll be there if you go home, won't he?" He's stroking his fingertips over his chin, watching Min as he thinks. Min remembers that habit. Remembers sitting with him in a couch broken to the floor, shoulders tipped together as they craned their necks to see the television.

Min thinks of Joon-young on his couch, in his bed, in his kitchen. Joon-young passing him beans to pick off the tips or pomegranates to excavate, Joon-young's cock in his mouth afterwards.

His head ached the entire day and the thought of all that makes him so inexplicably tired. Allowing him is the easiest thing in the world. It's between them; they're special, the two of them. It's the easiest thing, if only he had enough sense left to take advantage of the ease Joon-young's always given him.

But he doesn't. He doesn't have much of himself left, sense or not. It's all doled out to the two of them, wrapped up in parcels. Dumped with other forgotten things like old bills and outdated business cards even though they asked.

"Yes. It's been a long day."

If he said any of this to Ja-hee, she would be angry for him. She would rant and rave and be furious, and Min would have to calm her down out of going after Joon-young. But Eun-bok just watches him with those placid eyes. He's a sink full of frothy dishwater with its bottom piled with razors, untrustworthy, as ambitious as Min, but the directness helps even as Min struggles both to avoid and to respond in kind.

Chun-seok helped too, eventually. Dealing with Chun-seok, the way he didn't seem to know what to say to Min at first, was painful. Too painful for it to make any sense. But it hurt that Chun-seok was careful with him before Min told him something personal. He missed Chun-seok calling him an asshole and he doesn't understand why it was a relief when he finally did.

It's been a long day.

"He'll make it longer," Min says.

Eun-bok gestures one of the bored students over, counting cash out of his wallet. "Then come home with me, hyung."

Min is miserable enough, drunk enough, that he can pretend he isn't relieved to agree.

They stop on the way at a convenience store, buying things Joon-young discovered to lie about their healthfulness after a year of letting Min spend the watermelon budget money on snacks and feed them to Eun-bok.

Even after Joon-young forbid them there was a neighbour of theirs who would sneak them packets in her coat, a woman with upswept hair and pantyhose that made her legs an unreal beige. Min asked her about it once after she handed some over for him and 'that poor boy on crutches', and she'd twitched up her perpetually sad mouth and said that _she_ certainly wasn't going to say anything about letting a couple of poor kids have some fun.

Eun-bok remembers her too, it turns out. "She used to help me with the step when you two were late. Remember when the toilet broke and we had to use the one on the third floor?"

"That's right," Min says, blinking recall. "Miss Sun. That was her name."

Eun-bok nods, choosing packets of ramyun. "I had to wait a long time to go when you had second shift. She'd help me when she came home after work. She was nice."

Min doesn't really know if she counts as nice. People think Sun-ho is a nice, charming man when Min wants them to. She could have been the same way. "It was a good deed," Min says.

Eun-bok's flat is shared with three other men, two of them Joon-young's, one a packager and one in the official police archives, and it's crammed, laid end to end with tables and poorly-stored appliances. He thought he left behind cracked kitchen linoleum years ago.

Eun-bok's room is tiny enough that they kick each other when they move, and getting water involves Eun-bok plastering himself to the floor so Min can stagger over him, but he doesn't have so many things as Min might have expected. Very few, really: an exposed rail of shirts, trousers folded underneath, two pairs of shoes, a futon and thin pillow. There's a computer against the wall, the monitor sat on the floor with a keyboard balanced atop. It's clearly where all the money in the room is concentrated.

Min reluctantly crams in beside him with his mouth smearing on Eun-bok's shirt and Eun-bok's elbow on his knee as they build up a rustling pile of snack wrappings.

"Don't you get paid?" Min asks, looking around again. Almost all of it could stand with an upgrade or three.

Eun-bok shrugs and wipes powdered sugar on his jeans. "I'm saving up for a new graphics card. You dislike people, hyung. I don't."

Min scowls and takes the last of Eun-bok's favourite, tearing it open and shoving the ball into his mouth. "I don't care what you do."

"I'm not stupid, hyung. I have another packet," Eun-bok says, digging into his back pocket and showing it to Min. "Do you care now?"

"No," Min says, and takes one of those too. "I'm not your hyung."

They lie down to sleep after a while, sugar a funny rush in Min's blood on top of languid alcohol, and the futon is thin but Eun-bok is warm beside him and the pyjamas Eun-bok stole from the packager are long enough to cover his hands and feet. There's a faint buzz that might be a light fixture or an old television, and even with the overhead turned off it's almost bright enough to see colours, a yellow glare from streetlights casting shadows on the wall.

"Go to sleep," Eun-bok says.

Min looks at him. He's felt him shift and rustle and twitch, sigh and rub his spine, and he asks before he can think better of it. "Do you still need your back rubbed?"

"There's no-one else to do it," Eun-bok says after a pause. "Do you still remember how?"

"I couldn't forget," Min says. "He drilled me, remember?"

"I wouldn't mind," Eun-bok says, and Min sits up, finding the starting muscles easily. He remembers when Eun-bok would flinch into the floor at a touch, when he would shake and turn his head aside. Now he looks at Min, and there's only a shiver that could be anything. "It's been a long time. I don't … with anyone."

Min can guess why not easily enough between the heavy keloids under his fingers and the way Eun-bok's mouth is flat and tense. "You're lucky, then."

"Fuck you, hyung," Eun-bok says, very quiet.

"What, because you're lucky I'm here? How does that follow?" Min snaps.

Eun-bok doesn't acknowledge him but he tenses under his hands and forces his muscles looser, his hips tilting out of ramrod-straight. It's easier to rub at the knots now, to trace the patterns of scars and work his thumbs into his skin until Eun-bok groans and flinches and settles more, and more, and more. "You still haven't taken the scars off?"

"Saving up for that too," Eun-bok mumbles.

Min keeps going until even the scars are more supple and there's no hardness other than bone and steel under his skin and Eun-bok's pushing at Min's arm.

"That's enough, it's enough. It's good." He turns his head away from Min, his breathing much more even, and when he shifts again it's a gentle movement instead of annoyingly sharp. Min's hands thrum, almost an ache. It's familiar, and he flexes his fingers, shifting to settle on his side. Eun-bok's shoulder is a stark shape against the white wall. Grey shadows from an amber light.

"Really no-one?" Min asks. He doesn't think Eun-bok's asleep. He would want to be awake to feel better, if it was him.

"You've seen my dick, hyung," Eun-bok says. "Did you forget?"

Min did forget. He supposes normal people would find bite marks hard to understand despite being self-evident. Stupid people. "Do you still have to sit down? He worried you would find it hard to advance."

"It doesn't matter much now. It was harder in the academy. He said it would be hard and it was. But in the force building there's stalls and enough traffic that no-one notices."

"They're not very good at their jobs, then," Min says.

Eun-bok sighs. "I don't mind, hyung. It makes it easier to look after everyone. He doesn't ask a lot of me anyway. Not like he asks you."

Min examines his shoulders for some clue in the stillness of his arm and the dip of his waist. "What does that mean?"

"If he didn't ask too much you wouldn't be here," he says. "You'd be home in bed."

 _With him_ , Min supplies in his head, and here in the dark he can touch his throat, wrap his hand around it perhaps the way Joon-young did. A drunk Joon-young is voluble and volatile and generous with whatever emotions he has and then he puts them around Min's neck. Inside him. It's the only explanation that makes sense. He has them and then he gives them, but Joon-young doesn't understand, so it is like this. Min can still feel, if he stops thinking long enough, the way his thumb and forefinger pulled when he rubbed his come inside him.

"Tell me about the spider, hyung," Eun-bok says quietly.

"You really are good at this," Min says, more than a little bitter. He knows Eun-bok is full of razors. He knows the quiet of him is deceptive and that Eun-bok rarely misses a thing. He knows, and yet he's falling for it, the lull of warm quiet and his steady voice. The intimacy of it. It would be kind if it wasn't one of Joon-young's techniques refined to art -- as it is, it's generous the way a drunk Joon-young is generous.

"I have to be," Eun-bok says, matter-of-fact. Min knows what he's doing. It's refreshing to be told a truth, even if it is an objective one. Especially because it is an objective one Min agrees with -- Eun-bok does have to be good at it. At this. "Will you tell me?"

He's being good at it at Min and it's not fair. "I don't want to. Why do you pretend to care?"

Eun-bok turns over onto his back, folding his hands on his chest, his shadow disappearing off the wall. "Hyung, I told you. You said I was making it sound sordid."

"You don't owe me anything," Min says. "We owe him."

"Yes, hyung," Eun-bok says. "We do."

Again an objective truth, and again Min feels that lure of being agreed with, of commonality. He's so fucking good at this. "Why aren't you an interrogation officer?"

"Just because I have the knack doesn't mean I want to do it every day. I like my keyboard."

"I like painting," Min says. "I didn't make it my job."

Eun-bok examines his hands and makes a dog shadow puppet on the wall. It's a piss-poor attempt. "He didn't let you," he says, mild as new cheese, and it's another truth, another commonality, another shared objectivity. Min could choke it down with the others if he let himself. If he gave in to that easy, sure tone.

"Of course not. We needed money," Min says, reluctant to give in entirely. "Artists don't make much."

"You could have. Look at the younger ones, hyung. They do all kinds of hobbies and he tells them they can do whatever they want so long as it makes money. Not a lot of money, just some. Enough to live. There's even one playing on a game team now."

"It's different for me," Min snaps, and he knows even as he shuts his mouth that he's lost.

Eun-bok shifts over to his side. Still can't sleep on his back because of the plates, then. His face is a panoply of straight lines and curved reliefs and Min is glad he can't see his expression. "How come?"

"You know why," Min says. "None of you were good enough."

Eun-bok is the only one who's seen them together, and Min doesn't precisely remember what it was he saw -- Min in Joon-young's lap, maybe. Min with Joon-young in Joon-young's bedroom, maybe. Joon-young's fingers in him and Min sucking his cock, maybe. Whatever it was, Eun-bok left afterwards. Not immediately, but he said over dinner he wanted to focus on getting into the police academy, and then he left three months later for a feeder program. For a while Min's hands missed the ache of rubbing him down twice a day.

Min's never asked why Eun-bok left. Back then he felt triumphant, that it was a good thing he and Joon-young had the flat to themselves before the next lot of whining albatrosses. They made use of it, between work and school and homework. He still remembers how Joon-young held him up against the splintering cabinets and made him come with hard, lingering touches.

"He isn't like yours," Min says into that awful quiet, the awful stillness of Eun-bok's face. "It's been a long time. You've forgotten a lot. But your bad memory is not my problem."

Eun-bok sighs. "Then tell me why you're here, hyung."

Min rolls onto his other side, puts his back to him, as though it'll help anything. "I did. I told you and you offered," he snaps.

"Yes, hyung," Eun-bok says. "Because you needed it."

Min closes his eyes and jams his cheek into the pillow Eun-bok lent him. "That's your answer."

"Tell me where you got the spider," Eun-bok says.

It's not even coaxing. That's the thing that breaks down the last piece of Min's fight against the inevitable. Eun-bok isn't bothering to coax or cajole or tempt him. He's just there, solid and steady and sleepy-sounding at Min's back, and he's not hyung. Hyung paces and says unreasonable things and makes wild conjectures. Eun-bok is just relentless, calm interrogation. It makes it easier to blame him afterwards. So easy to say anything at all. Too easy to say everything.

"Where do you _think_ ," Min says. It's like an exhale, the final cold sip of coffee at the bottom of his mug where the milk congeals.

"How? Hyung." There's a firmness to his voice. Like police. Like confidence. "How?"

"Just … he was drunk. You didn't know that, did you?"

"That he drinks?" Eun-bok makes a considering noise. "I didn't. I don't think he ever touched alcohol in front of me."

"He's a better person than I am," Min says. It doesn't sound as good as it used to. "I wouldn't have bothered to rescue you."

Eun-bok makes a soft noise, and after a moment Min realises it's a chuckle. "You and a lot of people, hyung. That's not special."

"He says I am. It's my personality. I'm a special person with a special personality. Anyway, I want him to look after me. He's better at cooking now."

"Letting him put his hands on you doesn't make you special either, hyung," Eun-bok says. "Even if he cooks."

"It's not letting. I want his hands on me," Min says. He groans and puts his fingertips to his eyes, pressing gently on the headache he knows he'll have tomorrow. "You're the one making it sound bad."

"How drunk, hyung?"

Min shrugs off the question. It's not something he wants to think about, much less answer. "I was drunk too. And now I'm drunk again and I have work tomorrow. Stop interrogating me. Go to sleep. You have work too."

"How drunk?" Eun-bok puts a hand on his upper back, right where Min can't quite reach to swat him away. "Did he know what he was doing?"

"I don't know. What does it matter? Stop touching me if we're not going to fuck."

That gets him a sharp breath and Eun-bok's hand withdrawing so fast his nails rasp on Min's shirt and rake the skin over his spine. "I didn't deserve that."

"I don't deserve to have to answer for his bullshit," Min snaps back. "I don't know if he meant to strangle me. I don't _know_." Fuck. Eun-bok's talented but he reports to Joon-young too and Min can't let himself forget it. "You didn't hear that. That was your drunken delusion. Go to sleep before you have more of them."

"Hyung," Eun-bok says. "You owe me an apology. I owe you one too."

Min manages to eke out, with effort and bad grace: "Fine. Sorry."

"Me too," Eun-bok says. "Did you pass out?"

"A few times," Min mumbles. "I give up on trying to wake up after a while."

Eun-bok's hand comes back, and Min breathes out hard when he feels his palm. He has small, fine hands. Not like Joon-young or hyung. Small hands. "That's really dangerous, hyung."

"It hasn't hurt me," Min says. "He wouldn't hurt me."

"If you need to," Eun-bok says after long, long quiet and both their unsteady breathing, "you can sleep here. Whenever. Just let me know so I can get blankets out for you."

"He knows where you live." Min pulls away. "Anyway, it's not like that. This is just tonight."

"Text me first," Eun-bok says. "Remember, hyung. If you need to."

"You owe him too much," Min says, and pretends to sleep long enough that Eun-bok doesn't move when Min stealths his phone out of his bag.

Boring pattern. Eun-bok's VPN is easy enough, and he opens a private window. He doesn't know what to search now it's come to it.

 _Sex without condom_ , he tries. The results don't tell him enough. Every variation gives him sites about pregnancy or abortion. Or venereal disease, which is almost what he wants to know, but not quite.

He's uneasy. He's been uneasy all day, low in his belly. Uneasy through meetings about cases and the daily discussions of overload and the two hours he blocked out with Chun-seok to work on the Chairman Kim defense. Uneasy while Eun-bok needled him, uneasy while they ate and drank. Uneasy.

Min doesn't know how to fit it all into a search bar. How often is too often, for one. How to know what he does or doesn't have. How to know if his mouth is contaminated, his skin, his cock. Hyung touches him with bare hands so often. He doesn't fuck him without a condom, doesn't blow him without one, but he kisses Min. He kisses him and he touches him everywhere, and Min doesn't know if hyung has to be told. If he's diseased, if it's better that hyung doesn't touch him. If Joon-young is right after all, was right all along, and it's better that no-one other than Joon-young touches him.

He didn't mean to be lying when he said to hyung that he didn't have any diseases. He thought he was telling hyung a whole truth for once. He thought so.

Then there's a hand clamping on his wrist and Eun-bok is taking back the phone. "What are you doing?" Eun-bok snaps, and then he tilts the screen, the brightness of it showing his face. "What have you _done_?"

"It wasn't my idea," Min says. Folding over on himself happens so slowly, like a hand pushing down his shoulders, that he doesn't realise his chin is tucked against the punched-out knees of his borrowed sweats until all that's in front of his face is the floor. "It wasn't me."

"But he wouldn't. That's so stupid." Min doesn't have any answer for him. "He did. Shit, hyung," Eun-bok says quietly, his hand still on Min's wrist. He was there for Joon-young's bouts of antibiotics too. For the fire in the records, the switched fingerprints. He knows too. Somehow it's the _worst_ part of it all, that even without Min explaining all of it there's someone else who thinks Joon-young shouldn't have done it.

The floor is safer to stare at than Eun-bok, until it isn't, and he shuts his eyes. Min has nothing to say for himself, much less Joon-young.

"How long ago? Today? Last night?" Min nods. "All right. Well. Well, there's a few places where you can go get tested. They won't ask for your name, just your phone number so they can call you back for the results. We'll go back to the soju place, get your car, go there. You can drop me off at work."

Min bristles. "We? What do you have to do with it?"

"If you want to go alone, say so," infuriatingly calm.

Min should be able to say so. He wants to. He can't.

Eun-bok leans over him and puts his phone back into his bag. "Come on, hyung. Sleep. We only have a few hours."

***

Eun-bok shakes him awake and Min showers and dresses again, rinsing the collar of his shirt and sniffing his armpits. There's an array of concealers and foundations piled on the sides of the sink and Min rifles through them, daubing his hand until he finds one that matches. The petechiae are even worse today, a red subway map sprawl over purple.

He comes out of the bathroom freshly dressed, his hair wet, to discover Eun-bok still has the disgusting habit of cutting half a watermelon, putting it in a serving bowl, and eating it with a spoon while he watches television. Beside him is a long-haired man Min recognises as the non-Joon-young flatmate, and down the hall are closed doors and switched-off lights. The packager is night shift and the police archivist is second shift, according to Joon-young.

Chun-seok complains sometimes about his aunt showing pictures of her dogs and telling him all about their bowel movements. Min always wants to tell him it could be worse. He could have Joon-young telling him about _everyone_.

He watches the spray of watermelon juice a moment longer and decides coffee is a better goal than upending the bowl into Eun-bok's face.

The kitchen is a mess. Joon-young would never tolerate a kitchen this messy, and after several false starts with coffee tins that don't contain coffee - old leaking batteries, mouldy biscuits, unidentified loose-leaf something that spewed dust when opened -- he finally finds one that contains what looks and smells like instant coffee.

A brown caffeine drink. That's what he ought to think of it as. It's a brown caffeine drink.

Grimacing over granulated coffee in day-old clothes in Eun-bok's untidy kitchen with its filthy stack of dishes is somehow still a better morning than yesterday. Yesterday had his own bed, his clean kitchen, his car. But it also had Joon-young.

He checks his phone while he drains his mug, reluctantly checking hyung's unread, timestamped at midnight. Min must have missed it while he was arguing with Eun-bok. _That's fine. How about dinner tomorrow night? I'd like to talk._

 _Only for dinner, I'm tired_ , Min replies before he thinks better of it. He perches his empty mug somewhere between a fistful of used chopsticks and a filthy plastic penguin on the sideboard and goes back to Eun-bok. "When are we leaving?"

"You know, it's weird," Eun-bok's flatmate Min doesn't care about says. "You should be handsome, but you're not. Something about you. You're just not … something. It's weird."

Min ignores him. He wants this over with. He wants it done, so he can know, so --

Does he have to tell hyung that Joon-young forewent the condom regardless of the results? Is that something hyung should know? Min doesn't want to tell him. He wants to be told, _you have nothing_. For once it would be good to be told that.

"We've got places to go," Eun-bok says, watermelon demolished to a few streaks of pink among white pith. "Since I'm on strike, can you take care of this?"

"Why are you on strike? Can't you stop being on strike? I can't find anything anymore." He points at Min. "You tell him to stop."

"I wouldn't listen to him anyway," Eun-bok says, and replaces his seat with the watermelon bowl before the flatmate can stretch out his legs. The flatmate makes a sound like needles threaded through a dog's paw. Min wonders if they have a dog. Probably not.

It's not a terribly long walk back to the car, but long enough that Min feels the silence.

Eun-bok's face is placid when Min checks, focused ahead. He checks three more times and it's still the same. "Strike?" he asks finally.

"I get tired of being the only one on clean-up duty," Eun-bok says.

Min thinks back to the state of the place. "That explains a lot."

"I hate it," Eun-bok says. His shoulders shift under his jacket. "But I eat out and keep my room clean. It's not my problem they're lazy."

"People are like that," Min says. "Stupid and lazy."

Eun-bok looks over at him, face creasing. "What did you mean when you said it wasn't your fault?"

Min shakes his head carefully. He doesn't jangle and ache the way he did yesterday, but his head feels heavy. He imagines his brain sluicing inside his skull, imagines what it would look like if brains did move around that much. How it would feel if he reached in and squeezed, if it's like demi-glace. He should ask Joon-young. "You didn't hear that. It was a drunken delusion. Don't you remember?"

"Don't tell me I made it up, hyung. You know better."

It's true. Even someone like Min knows better. Joon-young's told him enough about the importance of being reliable. But Eun-bok is an adult, not a child. An adult who is also a policeman. "You have no legal duty to me," Min says.

Eun-bok puts his hand back in his pocket. "Even before I went to the academy you didn't want anything from me. Every time I have to call you for something, I ask you out for soju afterwards, I ask you twice, and every time you ignore me. But now you ask me. It's not normal, hyung. Something is going on with you."

"You're not my dongsaeng and you asked me for soju first," Min says, conscious of his own petty avoidance.

"I just need to know if I should pay more attention to him in case he does something," Eun-bok says. "Or not, if it would make things between you worse. That's all I need to know."

It's fair, given the situation with the task force, and that rankles. "You could call him more often," Min says grudgingly. "He likes you."

"Okay. I'll call him later. Thank you, hyung." Eun-bok puts in an earbud and sets his phone to a volume where Min can just barely hear the crackle of drums. He watches him swipe his thumb over his phone, the flicker of lists scrolling, and speaks before he puts in the other.

"I didn't know you still ate watermelon," Min says. "Do you remember when you saw one?"

"I didn't know what they were. They were big green things between the kimchi and plums." Eun-bok looks over at him finally. "That was years ago. You remember?"

"I have a good memory," Min says. "It was the first thing you wanted, and he thought it was good to reward interest in things. But they were so expensive and you ate them like a barbarian."

When Eun-bok lived with them extra money was _the watermelon budget_ for Eun-bok to get one and devour it all on his lap with a spoon, looking as content as was possible for his set, wary face.

Even then Min thought it was a hideous way to eat anything.

Eun-bok makes that soft chuckling sound and pulls out the other earbud, holding them in his hand as they walk. It's early enough that there's a weird transition between sleeping drunks and morning cleaners, and they separate to let one through. "It tastes better that way."

Min wrinkles his nose. "It can't possibly."

"You have weird standards, hyung," Eun-bok says. "That's your car, right? And that's the monitor. Did you put enough money on?"

Min's public image _cannot_ afford the fistfuls of tickets she's leaving on the other cars, and he breaks into a sprint, the thud of his nailed shoes bouncing up his neck and coiling into the nascent, hideous hangover headache he predicted last night. His eyes rattle.

He manages to get into the car and snatch up the ticket before she reaches him, ruffling his hair and giving her his best _nothing to see here_ smile when she knocks on his window.

She squints at him, hands on her hips, and after a few moments Min realises she's waiting. He rolls the window down. "Yes?"

"I'm going to wait for you to go. If you aren't gone, I am going to give you a ticket. I have your license plates, young man. It's no trouble for me."

"I'm waiting for him," Min says. He's still catching his breath, and from the way her wrinkled face pulls on itself he's not sure he managed to sound pleasant.

Eun-bok rushes up, puffing and red in the face, and bows quickly. "It's an official matter, I'm sorry," showing her his badge. "Do you mind if we leave now?"

"Oh, go ahead. But get a permit next time!"

Eun-bok slams into the passenger seat, buckling up, and Min backs them out and away from the monitor's arms-folded disapproval.

"You run like a dead chicken, hyung," Eun-bok says, curling up in the passenger seat with his phone. "Turn left here, then turn right at the lights."

Min's glad he doesn't have to ask. Eun-bok could, in theory, put the directions into his GPS, or into Min's phone. But then the information will be out of Eun-bok's hands, unlike the CCTV cameras they pass. "How long does it say?"

"Half an hour. They're pretty quick."

"You've been tested there?" Min asks, making turns as instructed. It's good there aren't many other cars yet. He's distracted by the knot in his stomach, by the thought of seeing hyung tonight, by this wavering haze of unreality that might be a hangover or might just be unreasonable dissatisfaction with things he doesn't have the right to find inadequate, a man he doesn't have the right to be disappointed in. "You said you hadn't."

"Other people have," Eun-bok says. "I go with them when they need somebody. I always answer my phone, so I'm the testing-and-crying friend."

Min can't work him out. "Do you mind?"

"No, not really. It feels good to do something. But I won't appreciate it if you cry on me, hyung."

"Stop asking me uncomfortable questions and I won't," Min snaps.

"Let me ask one more question. Then I'll stop," Eun-bok says.

The chances of that being true are nil. Eun-bok might protest that he's just an IT officer, but a cop is a cop and Eun-bok clearly thinks he's onto _something_. He'll be a dog with a bone until he gives up or Min gives in. "No deal."

"Think about it, hyung. Just one question and I'll leave you be."

It itches. He doesn't answer and the longer the quiet stretches the more it itches. He's curious and he's angry and he's so -- he feels close to understanding what they mean when say _he snapped_ , he's so lost and he's relying on Eun-bok to help him but the price is this _itch_. It itches.

He just doesn't have anything left, and five turns and fifteen minutes later Min looks over at him at a red light and raises an eyebrow. No-one's behind them so Min feels fine to take as long as he wants, and he locks the doors, loud in the silence, and meets his eyes again.

He waits for Eun-bok to shift uncomfortably, to curl up tighter and drop his eyes, his phone a shield. Good. Eun-bok has been _too_ familiar. He should remember what Min is. "What do you want to know?"

"Hyung, you should drive."

He doesn't bother to lift so much as a finger, much less look away. "Ask."

"You should drive." Eun-bok clears his throat, reaching behind him for the door. The only exit is Min's decision or breaking the window, and Min watches him consider it, tap the glass for weak spots and twist back to face him. "Or you should let me out. Hyung --"

"Ask," Min insists, sick to the back teeth of Eun-bok and his condescending, pitying interrogation, tired of him and the steel mind behind a velvet face. He's on the brink of tears despite his best efforts, and it makes it all the easier and pleasurable to watch his tension tweak tighter and tighter with every word. "Ask your question. Whatever was so important. Eun-bok."

"You sound like him," Eun-bok says after a moment. "You're using his voice."

"Ask," Min says. There's such a clarity in ruthlessness. It makes him giddy with the _simplicity_ of it. Is this how murdering a person would feel? How he's missed being right and sure. Min's been so confused for so long. This isn't confusing at all. It's _good_. "You won't have another chance."

Eun-bok sounds just this side of too steady. "Let me out at the next corner."

Min smiles at him. It feels so fucking good to smile without lying for once. "Is that your question?"

"Let me out," he repeats. "Let me out over there. Pull over. _Pull over_ , hyung."

"You're sacrificing a good chance," he says, very magnanimous in victory. "You should take it."

" _Pull over_. Hyung. Please."

There's a thrum in his hands that feels like anticipating his hands around a throat, like the success of eking one final whine out of someone else's dying pet. It feels good. So good. "Since you ask nicely." Min turns on his indicator and changes lanes in the middle of the empty intersection, slowing to a stop at the side.

Eun-bok unclips his seatbelt. "Let me out."

Min waits a moment longer, his finger on the switch, and sighs when Eun-bok just sits there, hunched and his face set. The moment the doors unlock Eun-bok is out on the street, arms wrapped around his waist, bending over with his mouth open and his eyes shut.

It gives Min time to realise that he played exactly into Eun-bok's hands, and the sense of victory drains away, replaced by something muffled and dull. He's easy, isn't he? He's easy. For Joon-young, for Eun-bok, for hyung too. He didn't _mean_ to do it that way, exactly. It just -- itched. Though it was nice to have a strong sense of himself for a few minutes. It was nice.

He did exactly what Eun-bok asked him to do, and if _that_ was Eun-bok's question he got his answer. But Eun-bok's still bent over like he didn't get exactly what he was aiming for. "You're very good at manipulating me," Min calls to him, careful of disturbing the drunk asleep against a lamppost. "Shouldn't you be glad your bait worked?"

"I'm not." He sounds breathless, and he drops into a squat, hugging his knees. "I'm not. You're still going to wait for me to get back in, hyung?"

Min scowls. Eun-bok isn't making any sense. "Do you want to walk to work?"

"I'm going to get back into the car," Eun-bok says, and gets up, rubbing his hands on his thighs. "I'm getting back in the car."

He does. Min watches him breathe out as he buckles up and smooths the strap over his shoulder, puzzled by the look on his face. Ja-hee used to look at him like that, in the months before she left, after she argued with Joon-young in the main room and found Min listening behind a chair. She would reach down and grip his shoulder and look at him like that.

Min wishes Joon-young could be here to explain why Eun-bok is behaving like this.

"Do you remember when the old man would say to be careful when picking up rocks, you don't know what you might get?" Eun-bok says a few minutes and three right-turns later into a district grimly residential, streets narrowing and women in high heels filling out of door after door with their shiny straight hair flicking side-to-side across identical denim and leather jackets.

It was Ja-hee who first told him about the morning girls. Their flat then was former student residence for a shuttered university, and the flats around them were still taken up with a cross-section of vaguely employed students and entry-level managers waiting on a list to move somewhere better. Being on the sixth floor gave them a bird's eye view of the one-night stand activity, how they streamed across broken concrete and around thickets of weeds like ragged flocks of pigeons.

"Hyung?"

"I remember," Min says, shaking off the distraction. Perhaps he should go put Ja-hee's chairs together someday. Joon-young would accept that excuse too. "I found a snake."

"Right. I wasn't careful just now, hyung."

Min's not sure he likes this analogy. "I didn't even get to _do_ anything," he snaps.

Eun-bok shakes his head. "Don't tell me, hyung. Really, don't. It's warmer in here than the train. Turn up there."

He breathes in hard through his nose and indicates, waiting for a lone passing car. Frustration knots in his stomach. Min doesn't know what he would have done if Eun-bok resisted him instead of playing dead. But he knows he would have felt better afterwards. Much better than this.

***

Min texts Joon-young once he arrives at work, relieved to be done with the tests and Eun-bok's brand of manipulation and the persistent urge right up until he dropped him off to pull over and lock him in and finish what he started. _What do brains feel like? Without preservative._

 _Come at lunch_ , Joon-young answers, and Min works until his phone buzzes against his thigh that it's time for break, and he makes his excuses and slips out. The examiner's office is in a building not too far from the department, and Min likes the walk to settle himself from Jung Sun-ho to Min to Jung Sun-ho again.

It wasn't so long ago he wanted desperately to throw off Jung Sun-ho and hear _Min_ out of hyung's mouth. It wasn't so long ago that time spent with Joon-young was a relief, a bulwark against the rest of the world that would never understand them.

Now it's something different. Not quite a relief. But not fundamentally difficult, not like Eun-bok kept implying with his _questions_ and his soft _hyung_ and unwarranted comparisons.

Joon-young in his coat and gloves and glasses is still Joon-young, and Min knows better than to do without him. Boxing him off from the time Min spends with hyung is hard enough. From all of it? He can't. He can't picture it. Who will Joon-young be with, if not more albatrosses? Even if the trusts from the oldest children are finally opening up, he can't afford to fill the house.

He hates being alone. Min knows that much. Joon-young so hates being alone.

One day hyung will go back to his normal life half a world away and Min will still not be alone. Will still be cared for, looked after. That's what Joon-young is. Even as things are uncertain that is a constant between them. They are not alone so long as they have each other.

Min leans back against the door. "I took STD tests."

"That's prudent. Unnecessary, but prudent." Joon-young offers him the box of gloves. "Put these on."

"Are you sure?" Min asks him. "I remember you had oral gonorrhea. Among other things."

Joon-young stills, a fractional moment of quiet that steals Min's breath. "That I did," he says, folding down the sheet over the body between them.

Min steps forward and pulls the gloves up over his wrists and shirt cuffs, idly cataloguing. Mid-fifties, female, brittle hair, a bruise to the left shoulder and right breast and a wound to the hairline above the flattened right ear. "Domestic case."

"Yes," Joon-young says, tracing a line in the air above the shoulder bruise. "There is a hairline crack in the scapula."

All dealt by a left-handed person, taller, stronger. Pushed against a flat object, hits to the breast and ear to incapacitate. But not necessarily done by the murderer. "Cause of death?"

Joon-young lifts her hair, and Min bends to see, finding a part of the skull missing and the brain terracotta beneath. "Pedestrian car accident, thrown into a streetlight. Impact concentrated here first." He points to the wound, that squashed ear. "Temporomandibular joint second."

Min thinks it through. "The bruising is the result of the domestic, not the accident. The wound and the joint destruction are the case."

"Yes. The rest is incidental unless the car or driver is implicated. But here. Min. You wished to feel an unfixed brain?"

Joon-young's still holding a fistful of hair out of the way, so Min doesn't question him and bends down.

"I was wondering." Min reaches through the missing section of skull to touch and finds it _soft_. Not a plush softness or a flexible one, but like barely-set aspic, apt to be crushed by the flat of a spoon or a too-hot breath. There was a mind in this veined, withering, split-open organ, and if he isn't careful to touch with the same delicacy he would brush gilt, he would leave an impression greater than any he could ever have left in life. It's so soft.

He realises he's smiling and he looks up to share it. "That's lovely."

Joon-young is smiling the private smile he keeps for Min, close-mouthed with a curve to his eyes, a joy in them. "Yes, isn't it?"

His glove brushes over Min's hand, latex catching and squeaking, and Min feels -- feels the intent of him. How he wants to touch Min, in this moment. Perhaps press him against something. Lean him back over this cadaver and fuck him. Fuck him and rattle the table and smash this soft, unprotected brain inside its broken skull. Fuck him with the knowing that in this, Min sees even a little of what Joon-young sees. That they understand one another and there is no-one who could ever be good enough to come close.

Joon-young _approves_ of him.

"Are you expecting anyone?"

"No," Joon-young says, and he steps back, puts the sheet back over the corpse, and strips off his gloves. "Come through."

Min smiles to himself and washes his hands beside Joon-young, intensely aware of their shoulders brushing, of Joon-young leading the way and taking off the lab coat. Of locking the office door behind them both.

Joon-young sits on the edge of his desk, knees spread, and takes out his cock, stroking himself hard, and Min fishes a condom out of the pocket of his trousers and goes to his knees.

It's a focused blowjob, Min moving his mouth slowly, careful not to accidentally pop the seal of his mouth and make any noise that might alert someone in the corridor, careful to breathe through his nose and put a condom on himself to avoid semen on the floor. Careful to match the rhythm of his hips rocking, pushing his cock into his hand, and the slide of Joon-young's cock through his fist and into his mouth. The weight of him in his mouth feels righteous, the head fitting on his tongue. Something Min wants and deserves and needs.

"Min," Joon-young murmurs, his hand on Min's shoulder. "Min."

Min thinks he knows what he means, and he closes his eyes and leans into it, giving up on getting off in favour of wiping his chin and concentrating. No planned company doesn't mean people won't rush in, or the phone won't ring. It means being quick and quiet and Min is well-practiced at this office, this cock, this particular urgent thrum of knowing and being known.

Joon-young comes a few minutes later, grip biting into his jacket and making a soft, slow noise.

Min's had the opportunity to at least keep himself hard with a few quick yanks here and there, and he lifts his mouth away and rests his head on Joon-young's thigh as he strokes. He comes to the taste of latex, the warmth of him against his forehead, and Joon-young rhythmically squeezing his shoulder, pain to ache to relief to ache to pain.

"Good," Joon-young says. He brushes his hair out of his face and cups his cheek, his palm soft and thick with the smell of latex and soap, and doesn't say anything.

But Min can feel it. Joon-young doesn't have the words; he'll likely never have the words. But he's looked after Min for so long, tended him when he was small and sick and tended him since in his exams and restlessness and again now with this intimacy. There is no-one else, Min is very certain, that Joon-young would trust with this touch. No-one else.

All that unease feels small and far away now. Not insignificant, but unimportant. Joon-young takes liberties because he trusts him. Joon-young is someone Min allows to take liberties. Joon-young is someone Min wants to take liberties because a moment like this, too, is a liberty and a gift for Min. For Min, who is special.

He doesn't know what to do about hyung. But he can put that off for as long as Joon-young keeps holding onto him. Just a few more moments of knowing what he wants, what he is, how it feels to be someone Joon-young touches like this. Just a little longer.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fingers crossed I can keep this pace up! Don't worry, I know what I'm doing.

Hyung gestures him inside with politeness Min remembers from their father's better days. "It's good to see you. Come in."

Min hears the door shut and is tempted to turn around and step up against him, and kiss him. He's tempted to run his hands up his shirt over and over until it pulls out of his trousers and gives him space to work his fingers underneath and run his fingernails up his chest.

But he still doesn't know if he should tell him. If it's something that even should be said. They've been diligent with the gloves and condoms. He's never noticed anything to suggest hyung fucks him in his sleep. And the tests might as well come back clear and make it all moot.

Hyung lingers and Min wonders if he's thinking about touching him. If he's looking at him the way Min wants to turn and look at him.

"We should talk," hyung says, careful and cold. His tone is like plunging his hands into a bucket of ice water, sending a shiver up Min's arms to his scalp. "I have questions to ask you. Also a picture. Do you have time?"

"Of course," Min says, and he turns with a smile he's practiced often. "Did you order dinner?"

"Mhm, for both of us. Should be up soon. Sit."

Min sits where he's told, unbuttoning his jacket and hanging it on the back of the chair. They're not in the bedroom, but close enough that can see the bed, its neatly made blankets and magazine-arrangement pile of pillows. It makes him uneasy. Should he tell him? But he doesn't want to stop hyung touching him. "Questions or picture first?"

Hyung nods. "I've been asked to help with the Yang investigation. Do you know about it?"

"Yang Seung-hoon and his girlfriend Kang Ji-seo were found dead in her apartment." Public facts.

"You knew him," hyung says, hands easy on the tabletop. "It wasn't obvious in the phone records, but I listened to the recording of Detective Choi's interview. You knew him very well."

Min toys with his glass, wishing for wine but knowing after the last few days it's better to stick with water and give his liver a break. "One rich asshole is like any other rich asshole. Yang Seung-hoon was a very standard, boring, rich asshole."

"He called you personally," hyung says. "Not your work number. The same number you gave me. There were times he called you often. You said you were part of the Yang conglomerate when we first met."

"It is that group," Min acknowledges. "The family relation is distant, but I have benefited."

"Close enough to benefit is close enough to be of interest to me," hyung says. "Benefited how?"

His careful attention feels so good Min almost doesn't mind that they're talking about Seung-hoon. "I have gifts from them, my home is one such gift, and in return I gift them my absence. I stay out of the way and draw no untoward attention. His situation was similar. We were alike in that way."

This is easier. Talking to hyung is easier than wondering about sex, if hyung is someone who would care if Min's makeup rubbed off.

"Do you know why he was assigned to the Chinese branch?"

"Certainly nothing he told me," Min says. "That might have meant admitting inadequacy."

Hyung grins, a brief and gorgeous flash of teeth. "I came to that conclusion too. He never did well in his activities?"

"As far as I know he was a headache to the group. If not a headache, then an eyesore. He did as he pleased. Sometimes that meant pretending we were close so he had someone to complain to."

Hyung pushes his phone to the center of the table. "Close enough to give him paintings?"

"Absolutely not," Min says, and looks down at the painting Joon-young stole.

He almost forgot about it what with one thing and another, but seeing it in that fucking apartment, that bare white wall and fucking _purple_ shutters --

Of course hyung noticed it. Of course. He would have to be sucking Min's cock levels of distracted not to notice something so incongruous.

"Why aren't they Korean?" Min muses.

"Why --" Hyun laughs, but the lines of his face are unhappy. "That's your reaction? Look at this." He spreads his fingers, zooming, and yes, that teal smear is his signature. He was stupid enough to sign it. Of course. "That is the same as on your palette that you said Min gave you. It is the same signature."

"Shouldn't that be excellent news for you?" Min asks. "If you think this was painted by Min, he must have aged a little. He wasn't this good when I knew him."

"But _what,_ " hyung says, "was it doing there? I thought perhaps a gift from the murderer. Or someone who knows the story of us. It was freshly nailed in. It was not original to Kang Ji-seo's tastes and it was not to Yang Seung-hoon's taste either. There were signals in her flat, and I am assuming this is one of them. Will you tell me what you know about it? Does this seem -- is this Min's style?"

He's glad he faced all of that stuff to the wall in his studio and only let Hyun see the very, very abstract works. Most of it is still, even now, facing the wall. Joon-young must have searched for it in particular. Two faces on one neck, in a hand mirror -- so what? Nothing particularly special about it. There's half a dozen exactly like it in Min's studio.

Min sighs. Joon-young doesn't belong in this hotel room. "It's possible. Need I remind you it's been a long time? Styles change. The signature does seem the same but otherwise, I really can't say." His own art is proof enough of that. These days the intense cloister of two heads, two faces, seems stifling rather than a truth to refine and refine until it speaks for itself. These days he likes the briefs for pay better than what comes out of his head.

"He drew like this when we were children," hyung says. "It's the same signature, your palette proves as much. But the artwork -- that's the same too. Someone painted this. Whoever painted this, they know about us. They know about Min."

It used to be a comment like this would stir in his head a contemptuous internal shout of _I'm right here, I'm right here, why aren't you looking at me?_ But now that feels ridiculous and overwrought. Rewriting the past? Throwing it into Hyun's face? He doesn't remember. Min told him too much, dangled too much in front of him, taunted him up, down and sideways, and hyung still doesn't remember.

All Min has for Hyun now is a wistful whisper in his head: _you wouldn't want me if you knew._

"Suppose they do," Min says. "You don't have any leads. A signature like that is almost impossible to trace without the artist having an exhibition record. This is not the sort of thing galleries want. Fan pictures get exhibits. Goryeo period with modern makeup gets exhibits. This? No."

"I have an art dealer friend," Hyun says. "He'll look into it for me. I thought you would be more invested in this. You kept his palette for fifteen years."

Min shakes his head. "I don't mean to dismiss you. It is a good sign that he lived after we lost contact. I just don't think this is as much of a lead as you want it to be."

Hyung folds his hands. "You're worried I'm getting my hopes up?"

"It may be that he is connected to the murderer, like you suspect," Min says. "What will you do then?"

"If it comes to that, I'll deal with it. For now I have this," picking up his phone. "This picture and this signature. Seeing it, I felt -- a clue. Finally, a clue. Something to know that he might still be alive now. I felt that. I still feel it. He might be alive. If he is connected, then -- so long as he is alive, I will deal with it then. After I find him."

Min answers the door when room service knocks.

It's Joon-young's spy again. "Come in," he murmurs. "Have a look around. You have to make sure you tell him the right things, don't you?"

"You scared Eun-bok shitless," she says, glaring under her bangs. "I'm not talking to you."

She doesn't linger, only serves them food, takes her tip from hyung, and leaves.

Min blinks after her, bemused. He did frighten Eun-bok. But enough for him to _tell_ people about it? Min was only doing what Eun-bok knew he'd do, and he didn't even touch him.

At least dinner smells good. He thumbs open Eun-bok's texts on his phone and sits down. _Did I really scare you shitless?_

"A friend?" hyung asks, and he offers Min wine. "You seemed to know her."

Min waves it away and puts his phone on the table. "No, not a friend. I'm too busy for friends. You've seen my hours."

"I have. But you also don't look all that well," hyung says, studying his face too closely for comfort. "I hope it isn't because you missed me."

"I'm not that pathetic," Min says.

Hyun's mouth twitches. "That was a joke, but I also meant it seriously. You look unusually tired. Just … please be comfortable with me. Tell me."

Min hesitates. He could say it. He could. But he doesn't know what hyung will think.

"It's about your nonexclusive," hyung says. He doesn't sound like he's guessing.

"We --" He thinks about it. "I understand the English is 'bareback'." Min sips water, his mouth dry.

Hyung's face changes expressions too rapidly for Min to track until it settles in a watchful neutrality that hurts to look at. "That's a big commitment."

Min can't quite help scoffing.

"Sun-ho," hyung says, and it's so careful Min's nerves prickle in gratitude and irritation. "Is that all you wanted to tell me?"

"I wanted it to be you," Min confesses. It feels like dragging a splinter out of his fingertip, feels like trying to pick apart a knot of ribbons on a professionally-wrapped gift. "I had it planned out. I was going to offer the night before you left. I wanted it to be you." He swallows. "I wanted you to see your come in me."

Hyung reaches for his hand, right across the table, quick as a striking snake, and his grip is firm and sure and so, so tight that Min feels his throat knot. "I wouldn't have," hyung says quietly. "I'd rather us be safe. But I like it as a fantasy. I like it a _lot_ , so long as it stays a fantasy."

Min's eyes burn. He's not sure what this is -- relief? Disappointment? "I thought you'd like it."

"I would. But not while you're in this situation with your nonexclusive."

"I went for tests. If they come back fine --"

"I will refuse." Hyung looks so -- it's like when he found Min burning the hyacinths their father pulled up. "I don't want it like this. Thank you, but not this way."

Min looks at Hyun's hand on his, how his fingers overlap in Min's palm and press deep. "You don't have questions?"

Hyun squeezes his fingers. "Tell me what you can tell me."

"I --" Min shuts his mouth. It's cowardly and pathetic, but he wants hyung to touch him. He wants hyung to keep touching him, and looking at him. He doesn't want to talk about Joon-young. "There's nothing."

"You're too tired," hyung says. "That's fine. You can sleep here and tell me tomorrow."

"If I never want to tell you?"

"You can sleep here and kiss me tomorrow." Hyung smiles. "Actually, I had a plan for tonight. How do you feel about rimming?"

Min's heard the English before, but it takes time to connect. "Analingus?" he hazards.

"Yes, analingus. What do you think?"

"Sounds exhausting," Min says, just to fuck with him. Hyung's being so patient and understanding and it feels like being wrapped in wool, cosseted and lied to. "And risky."

"Not necessarily," hyung says, and he gets up from dinner, wiping and placing his cutlery, and rummages for something Min can't quite see until he brings it back to the light. It's a large square of something filmy and yellow-tinged that stretches over hyung's fingers when he spreads them. The loose corners shiver when he moves. "It's a dam."

Min's mouth dries. Planning ahead like this -- "You mean to put that on me."

"And --" Hyung pauses, his smile crooked. "Eat you out. Fuck you with my tongue. Yes. I'll be doing all the work." He raises an eyebrow. "Still exhausting?"

"No," Min admits, flushing. "I've never -- I haven't." He bites his lip. "Is is something you like?"

Hyung makes a considering noise. "Yes. But I prefer it with the dam, and few partners are willing to wait for me to place it properly. I don't do it as often as I'd like."

"Well, in that case. I'm hardly about to deny you," Min says. His face still feels hot, and he looks at hyung's mouth. Thinks of the way he sucks at his cock, how he licks Min's thighs until he shakes. Thinks of hyung touching him with his mouth the way Joon-young's fingers moved in him, and it's -- better, it's --

His chopsticks rattle and Min swallows hard. Food. They were in the middle of dinner. He tries for a bite and he has to breathe deeply with his eyes shut to steady himself.

"I'll shower after I've finished eating," Min says.

"Thoroughly," Hyun says, voice warm and sexy the way he gets on the phone when Min successfully talks him hard. Does that mean thinking about putting his mouth on him got hyung hard?

Min's breath shivers out of his mouth. The weight of his intent feels so good, enveloping and thick. Doesn't this mean hyung wants to fuck him? Hyung _still_ wants to fuck him. He told him and it didn't ruin it. "Of course."

***

"Bossy," hyung chides. "I'm not going anywhere. Relax."

"Do it _again_ ," Min insists, hips pushing up and back, frantic for more of his mouth, his tongue inside, the muted rasp of his stubble. "Again. That -- flick it -- _yes_ \--"

Hyung is making such noises, greedy, unrepentant noises, and every unthinking squirm only rewards him with another and another. His hands are greedy on his skin too, pulling at his legs, squeezing his waist, palms digging into his shoulders. It's like hyung can't get enough of him.

He crams his face into a pillow, clutching it in his fists and mumbling incoherence. He's already come once, is well on the way to a second, and Hyung makes it so hard to _think_ with his warm hands and warm mouth and slow, systematic _like this? Like this? How about this?_

"You're gorgeous," hyung says, thumbing Min's thigh. For all Min knows he's dripping sweat on the sheets. It certainly feels like it when Hyun touches him. "Going to come?"

Min lifts his head long enough to rasp out an order. "Fuck me."

"Can be arranged," hyung says, and Min groans, splayed and propped on cushions, his cock finding no purchase in them. Hyung touches him but only deliberate and slow, little brushes of his fingertips on the underside, and Min is this close to pinning him down and humping until he comes all over him.

The snap of gloves is familiar, though it doesn't belong here. "Why?"

"Until the tests come back," hyung says.

Min relaxes, breathing out as the dam is lifted and fingers push in deep. But then the dam comes back, shifting on his skin, and hyung's tongue also comes back to lick at his rim, those fingers curving inside, spreading, and Min has a hysterical moment of wondering if hyung really is licking between his fingers before deciding that yes, he is, and Min loves it.

"Good? Is it good, Sun-ho?"

Min whimpers before he can stop himself. "You know it is."

Hyung laughs. "Have I told you I love it when you make that noise? It means I'm getting it right." Min feels teeth on his cheek through the dam, a solid, firm _gnaw_ that makes him shudder all the way up to his shoulders, his hair standing on end.

The fingers turn into another way for hyung to tease him, to draw him out. He crooks them to the side, Min shivering at the way it's so careless, so _sure_ of Min that he can just move around inside him however he likes, and spreads them. It lifts Min, feels like a hook meaning to tip him sideways, and he halts, unsure of what hyung wants.

But Hyun sucks between them. Between his spread, tilted fingers, right on the edge, the wrap of his lips so much like the way hyung likes to suck on Min's lip, so much like the two-finger stroke Min used to want to beg Joon-young for. Min's feet quiver uselessly as hyung does it again and again without having to ask. He shifts around, licks and kisses, and Min doesn't know what he'll do next, if he'll bite his cheek, if he'll suck again, if he'll push his fingers deeper and fuck him with them. Thinking becomes a slow, slow distant thing, like a goal he doesn't want, and everything important is hyung's mouth, hyung's touch, the rush of blood in his head and cock.

Then he finally, finally touches him, closes his hand around his cock properly and tugs, fingers pushing in hard, and Min sobs into the pillow when Hyung thumbs his perineum just as firmly. From there it's not long to a cresting, incoherent blank of the sort he never lets himself have with Joon-young and only sometimes with hyung.

It leaves him wheezing for air, sprawled and unwilling to move even a toe, basking in the blissful weight of being exhausted and overcome by hyung's focused attention and just -- feeling good. So good.

"I'll just clean up," hyung says, and pats his thigh. "You're okay?"

Min manages to nod, air tasting of sweat and cotton, and after a moment roll over out of the wet spot. The pillow comes with him and he groans and peels it off, shutting his eyes.

" _Sun-ho_."

Min's eyes snap open.

Hyung looks horrified, and he's staring -- he's staring at his neck. At his face. Beige streaks come off on Min's fingers. The entire pillowcase is beige. All of his careful makeup is on that pillow. It's gone and now hyung can see everything Min didn't want him to see.

He covers his throat, too shaky still to handle hyung being disgusted by him. "It looks worse than it is. I'm just tired. Stop staring at me."

"The number one risk factor that predicts murder by an intimate partner is _strangulation_ ," hyung says. "Have you seen your face? He strangled you, Sun-ho."

He reaches forward and Min knocks his hand away and sits up, his limbs frustratingly slow to respond, that happy sated flutter in his stomach overtaken by terror. "It's not your business."

Hyung's mouth is a straight, terrible line. "He will keep doing it. He won't stop. He will kill you."

"Don't." There's a crack in him, in his throat. It's humiliating. He feels broken open, a threat to every secret he's ever been trusted to keep. "You're overreacting."

"Did you want him to fuck you without a condom? I didn't ask before." Hyung looks furious as Min's never seen him. "I'm asking you now. Did you want him to do it? Did he choke you unconscious and rape you?"

"It wasn't like that." It comes thickly, his tongue stiff the way it always is around words he wants to be true. "Its not like your psychopathy cases. You don't understand."

"He raped you. Didn't he? That's what you didn't want to say."

"Stop questioning me under duress. I'm tired," Min begs. He feels cold, stripped of insulation, stripped of defenses. There's still a warm ache between his legs and it only makes it so much worse to know that a few minutes ago hyung was happy. He'd made hyung happy.

He'd been happy too.

"Fine. Just. Just sleep, then." Hyung looks away. Min can hear his breathing, the bellow of it puffing through his nose.

"You should sleep too," Min says, in hopes this is all it is. Futile, likely.

"I can't. I don't want him to kill you. It's all I can think about."

"Why do you think it has anything to do with you?" Min asks, unsurprised by his fixitation but contempt nauseous in his throat nevertheless. It's not his business. Min's said as much.

Hyun closes his eyes, his head sagging between his shoulders, and the fists he has in the bedding slowly unclench. The look on his face is dark-eyed and bare with something Min can't name. "I suppose that's true. It doesn't. I have no right to worry. I'm just the one you use to cheat on him."

" _No,_ " Min snaps. How did hyung come to that from this? The upper hand feels like it's sliding through his fingers, like trying to seal a broken packet of pigment. "That's not true. It's not."

"Do you expect me to believe strangling you now is a coincidence? This pattern of behaviour from you, the avoidance, the insistence on coming to mine, and yours only during the day -- he must watch you in some way. It's not society at large you worry about. That's not something you concern yourself with even as much as I do. It's a specific risk you worry about, and the risk is this: you don't want him to see us together."

Hyung presses his fists to his mouth. Watching him think is thrilling and terrifying and so painful Min wishes there was something hard and heavy nearby he could throw at him to make him stop. He doesn't want this laid out. He doesn't want it said. He doesn't want hyung to realise any of this.

"The logical explanation is that he doesn't know about me. He must not know. He isn't a nonexclusive, but an exclusive, and I'm your _cheat._ Like you said you were my port girl, this is what I am for you. Am I wrong?"

Grabbing for his arm feels about as useful as grabbing a fistful of watercolours, but Min tries. Everything he thought he built over the last four years of having hyung close, of touching him and talking to him and careful unspokens and _having him_ is threatening to come apart so fast Min doesn't know how to stop it. "It's not like that. Do you think I'd ever let him eat me --"

"Right, thanks for the reminder, I have to clean up," hyung interrupts, pulling away. He shuts himself in the bathroom.

Min lies awake, listening to him moving about, the long splatter of the shower, and he shivers under every blanket on the bed. There's no warmth anywhere, and he thinks about the hopeless way he said _the one you use_. How he'd laughed, sounding so fond, when Min made pathetic noises. The way his mouth felt and his enthusiasm while he did something Joon-young would never do and made it so, so good for Min.

Hyung comes out of the bathroom and turns off the light behind him. It makes the hotel room fall into shadow, the only brightness the night lamp beside hyung's side of the bed. Min can't see him clearly. He doesn't think hyung wants him to.

He should take the intermission. He should keep his mouth shut. "It's not what you're for. It's not. I want you. I --" He bites his tongue. Confessions like that are beyond him. "Why won't you listen? He won't kill me. He wouldn't."

"That's your opinion. It means nothing," Hyun says. He sounds like a recording for some ponderous textbook. Not like Min's brother, or Sun-ho's lover. Empty. "Thousands of cases with the same elements and the same patterns mean something. Those cases and my intuition tell me he will kill you. What I don't know is if you will let him."

Min shakes off a quiver, burying himself beneath the blankets until only his forehead and scalp are exposed. He can't get warm. He doesn't know why he can't get warm. "It's moot," he insists. "There's nothing to let. It's not like that."

Hyung sits on the bed and reaches out, and when he touches Min's face his fingers are so warm Min leans into him. "Were you going to tell me any of it?"

"Of course not," Min says. "Why would I? You'd react like this."

"Right, of course. The personality he says you have." He puts his hands on his legs and leans away from Min, the slouch of his shoulders defeated. "I should leave you be."

Min works an arm out of the blankets and reaches for him, unsure what to say. So little of this has to do with hyung as a person and everything to do with what he is to Min. All the things he doesn't, shouldn't, know he is. "Don't. I'm cold."

Hyung shakes his head. But he gets under the blankets, throwing off the towel, and the furnace press of his naked skin is a shock Min flinches from and burrows against, pressing his back to his chest. "You are cold," Hyun murmurs, his arm going around Min's waist, and he fits their knees tighter. "Better?"

"Much better."

"I'm not," hyung says quietly, his breath warm on Min's neck. "I'm not better."

His voice is tight, his lips pressed against Min's hair, and Min shuts his eyes and folds his hand over hyung's and braces for things like _I don't want you anymore, it's me or him, I'm leaving._

"You don't think I have the right, but it doesn't matter. I'm still worried." He breathes in and Min feels it shake. "If it's the first time, this is a major escalation. Is it the first time?"

Min shrugs, liking hyung's skin against his. "It's something we do. Not for years, but sometimes."

"Is it? I think it's something he does to you."

"Does it matter?" Min asks back. "I was drunk, he was drunk. He forgets himself. You know I don't mind if it hurts."

"There's rough sex," Hyun says, so careful Min's teeth hurt with the urge to clench in irritation, "and there's choking you this badly. You were lucky. In many ways. For example, it didn't affect much of your sclera. I could see a little when you turned your head, but I thought it was stress. I saw the makeup but I thought, 'ah, he really must be tired'. I thought like a normal person exactly when I shouldn't have because I was happy to see you."

Hyung sounds so sad. Because of Min. It's nowhere near as pleasant as it used to be.

"I didn't mean for it to come off," Min tells him. "We were just … drunk."

"Leaning on alcohol as an excuse might hide the facts to someone who doesn't know better. But people like your nonexclusive don't lose responsibility for their actions. They do what they can't plausibly excuse the rest of the time. The reason he involves alcohol is so you don't hold him to account for it."

"That's not true." Min doesn't want it to be true. "You're talking about your experience. But he's different. This is different."

"Sun-ho. You're a criminal attorney. You know how this ends."

The worst of it is how _gentle_ hyung sounds. It's not fair for him to sound so pleasant and hold him so warmly while he says these things. It's not fair.

"Fine. Let's exercise the theoretical. Perhaps I want it to end like this. Perhaps, if anyone, I want it to be him." He twists to look over his shoulder but can't quite find his eyes. The shudder against his back shows he's listening, at least. "What do you think?"

"Why would you ask me that?" Hyun sounds like he wants to hit him. "I don't want you dead."

"But if I did," Min insists, knowing he is pushing at something, the shape of something huge and frightening, about to crash down. It could be hyung's anger or the future or some trail of thought that might lead to everything being said at last, risk spilled like a box of dropped pins.

So much has unravelled already. Leaving the rest untouched, uncertain, unresolved is too much to bear. He presses on as hyung grows still.

"If I did -- don't you think that would be best? I could die in a car, or I could slip on a piece of paper. It's not meaningful. It's not fun to be meaningless. But with his hands, because he _wants_ me to -- wouldn't that be meaningful?"

"So this is how you think. I wondered, the times I didn't ask, what I was avoiding. It's this. I ask you and you threaten me. This." Hyung kicks him and Min reels with a yelp, curling to grab his calf. "You can insist on putting yourself in his hands and daring him not to kill you. You can do that against medical advice, psychological advice, the advice you would give as an attorney if it was anyone else. But if that's your decision, I'll get an earlier flight. Or I'll move in after all. I refuse to be party to this. I refuse to help him kill you. I refuse to be the reason. I refuse."

Min realises hyung is crying, and he twists around, more shocked still to find him _sobbing_ , his mouth contorted, the back of his hand pressed to his teeth and his eyes screwed shut. He'd thought that was a rustle or the sound of scratching an itch, not -- not this. Hyung looks like he did at their mother's funeral. It's the same face.

"Hyung," he blurts, at an utter loss.

"The only reason you can act like it's a surprise I don't want you dead is because you refuse to accept that someone else might love you," hyung says, and he's as angry as Min's ever seen him and still crying. "Don't make suicide threats to me. To me, of all people. Don't."

"It wasn't --"

"It was and you know it." Hyung breathes out, shuddering, the sound of it awful and lurching. "Theoretical or not, you did it on purpose. You've considered it. I already lost -- I have lost everyone. He took everyone I had left away from me and now you say you would let him have you too." Hyung makes a terrible, grinding noise. "Don't ask me to accept this hypothetical. If it is hypothetical. I have given you as much as I can. But this, I can't give you."

Min stares at the streaks of his tears, a lump heavy in his throat, a sigh and a scream and a sob all caught up at the back of his mouth. "I need him."

"What you need is to decide whether the joy of him killing you one of these days is worth more to you than this. No more of this back and forth. Not when it's come to this. Not when it's come to you saying that you would let him kill you. Enough. It's enough."

"I wouldn't call it joy," Min mutters.

"You wanted to know how I would react," hyung spits. "It hurts me when you talk about letting him kill you. It hurts me to think of you dead. It hurts me that you've lied this entire time about the nature of your relationship with him. It hurts to know you will die because you don't think you can live without him. It hurts and it's always hurt. Now it hurts even more. Are you satisfied? Are you happy? Is that what you wanted?"

Min looks at his running tears, the bite marks in the back of hyung's hand, the curl of his lips, and wonders if this how Eun-bok felt with Min in the car. If, in ignoring caution and lifting a rock, he'd found too much beneath. "No."

"Ah, I must be unsatisfactory. At least … are these healing well?" hyung asks, voice broken in a way Min's almost never heard it, and he shivers when hyung touches his jaw.

It's strange how the petechiae are always under his eyes and along his jaw. It's strange how gently hyung is touching him. It's strange how much Min wants to tell him _I'll stay, please don't leave me._

He can't manage one. But he can manage the other. "Please don't leave me."

"You're the one leaving, Sun-ho," hyung tells him, stroking his thumb right where it's the most tender, and Min shivers, shutting his eyes. He doesn't want to lose this. He can't.

Without Joon-young? He can't do that either.

But this is _hyung_ , and this isn't even an inferior way of having him these days. It's not even a consolation stretched as tightly as hyung stretched the dam when he put his tongue inside. It's not stretched at all. This is a gift. This, being lovers, being close, the way hyung looks at Sun-ho -- it's a gift as much as having his brother back would be. Perhaps more.

Min wants it as badly as he's ever wanted anything. He wants to lie down in the bed, hyung's bed, and have him so, so close. He wants to kiss him and he wants to tell him that he'll stay. He wants to kiss him and make him smile and feel him nuzzle his arm when he's about to properly fall asleep.

But it's always been Joon-young.

"I can't," Min says, breathing past a knot in his stomach and an awful burn in his eyes.

Hyun understands. Min knows it from the way his hand pulls back and his eyes brim but his face stays dry when he wipes it with his arm. "Why does needing him mean letting him kill you?"

Min wishes he understood hyung in turn, but he doesn't. "Why wouldn't it?"

Hyung shudders around a cry so enormous Min can see it working up in from his gut, how it makes his stomach clench and his ribs heave and his lips shake. "There are ways to need people that don't mean dying for them, Sun-ho."

He thinks of hyung with the gun. He thinks of Joon-young and the risks he takes for the albatrosses. He thinks of Eun-bok in the car.

"Those are wants," Min says. "Just … wants."

"I would not die for you, Sun-ho," hyung says. "Does that mean my feeling is worthless?"

Min pulls his knees to his chest, careless of the sheets. They're not even hyung's sheets. The hotel will have dealt with worse. "Of course it doesn't. But it's not the same."

"Why is that?" Hyung isn't looking at him. He's picking at something in the sheets. "Sun-ho. Why is that?"

Min wishes he could treat this conversation, this argument, if they are arguing, like a defense and just _talk_ and make everything all right. But he's not good at this. Having to face him makes all the words feel small and pathetic. He wishes he could call Joon-young to explain the things Min can't. He's so good at explaining.

"It's different with him. I would, for him," Min says. "Whatever it is. I would. If it means his hands, then that's fine. I also would kill for him. It's all the same thing. It's the same feeling. We understand each other like that. We're alike. That's how it is."

Hyung sits up, but his shoulders slump like he can't hold them straight for long. "Where do I come in for you?"

He doesn't understand the question. How is this a question? "You don't. You're not part of it. You don't count."

Hyun shakes, violent and sudden, and Min's eyes fix on the grind of his teeth, how his hand fists so tightly the tendons stand proud. "Right. I'm the cheat. I don't count," he says. It sounds empty again.

Min groans. "Don't take it so personally. It's just different. It's normal, isn't it? Different relationships with different people?"

"But you think your connection with him is more meaningful."

"Of course it is," Min says, matter-of-fact. Why doesn't hyung understand? He should know.

"Why? You should explain. We are at last talking about the things we should have talked about years ago. You should tell me when you have the opportunity. Why?"

"He stays." Min watches him flinch. "After you're gone, he's here. You tell me I'm the one leaving, but at least he stays. He's been _here_ . He helps me. He looks after me and I'm tired of watching you leave. I'm tired of living for when you come back. I'm tired of phone calls and filming myself." He shuts his eyes. "I'm tired of being your port girl."

"We've discussed this. I've told you. I have told you often. You stopped being my port girl years ago," Hyun says.

"Have I?" It's an old, familiar bitterness that rises now. He's never had as much of hyung as he would like. Sometimes he doesn't answer his phone, or he replies after a day, and every time Min wonders if it's the last. "For all I know you have boyfriends in and out of your office. Maybe they're your colleagues. Or your students. Do you fuck your students for a better grade? I don't know. How am I supposed to know?"

"The way to know what I do is to ask me these things if they bother you so much." Hyung sounds coldly furious. "You ask me and you trust me when I answer you that I haven't. And I haven't. Ever since the police conference you are the only one I have had sex with. Since then, the only one." He gasps in a breath and leans forward, staring at Min so frankly that Min desperately wants to look away. "Can you trust me?"

Min links his fingers in his lap, and knowing what he will say next, knowing it will break something, perhaps the rest of everything he could have from hyung, is a ticklish calm that he presses to the roof of his mouth with his tongue. He still doesn't drop his eyes. Looking hyung straight on is the only way to do this right. It's the only way to tell the truth, that he's sure hyung doesn't want him as much as Min wants him. How could someone as normal as hyung know this feeling? And if not, then -- "I don't trust you."

Tears slide down hyung's cheeks and gather on his jaw. "If leaving bothered you so much -- you could have asked me to stay in Korea for you," hyung says, so choked that Min can barely understand him, "I would have stayed if you asked me."

Min didn't know that was even a consideration. He didn't know. Did he miscalculate? Realising that he doesn't hold all the pieces is a sinking, awful scrabble for surety. "No, you wouldn't have. You have a whole life in America, your tenure, your friends --"

"I had a plan," hyung interrupts. He brushes tears off his cheeks. It doesn't help. It doesn't stop his eyes from reddening, or the way they wrinkle, or the way more tears dot his lashes. "For if you ever asked me. For if you wanted me enough."

This should feel better than it does. It should feel light, refreshing. Pleasurable.

It shouldn't feel like he's cracking the rest of himself open. It shouldn't feel like begging. It shouldn't feel like those hazy black flashes before losing consciousness, unable to tell whether he is blinking or fainting.

Hyung questions how much Min wants him? Isn't it enough? Hasn't it been enough? He should know these things. He's the one who can. It's been so long, so many things, so much time. Hyung should understand him. Is it that he hasn't understood hyung? 

"I didn't know," Min says, wrenched out of him. "I didn't -- you _say_ so many things, but I didn't know you meant it. I've never wanted you to leave."

Hyung smiles. It's stretched and horrible. "Meanwhile you say nothing and expect me to know? You said it yourself. You don't trust me, Sun-ho. You don't trust me enough to ask what I want because you're so afraid the answer isn't you. You're so _sure_ that I'll throw you away." He breaks off. "If you're so sure, you can have it. I've had enough."

The wrench of refusal is nauseous and immediate. "You're wrong," Min says. He's not sure he isn't lying. He thinks he might be lying. "I don't trust you for different reasons. It's not that. There's things you don't understand."

"You don't want it to be true," hyung cuts in. He wipes his face and chin and neck, rubs his palms together. "That doesn't make it not true. If it's not true, why would you say all this to me? What other explanation can there be?" His chin wobbles. "Please just go."

Min hesitates still, torn and aching. He's hurt hyung terribly. He's hurt him so, so terribly, and to have been the one to do it -- it doesn't feel good at all. It doesn't feel even the little bit good that comes from kicking a ball out of range of a child's foot, or the bigger smugness of getting a client off multiple manslaughter charges. It's all torn apart and it should feel so much better than this.

He throws caution to the wind.

"There are things you don't know. Things that I haven't told you. It's because of those things. You don't _understand._ "

He can't leave it like this, with hyung so sad, with -- never seeing him again. This is what that is. This is goodbye, this is leaving, this is breaking up. This is not seeing him again.

Min can see it in his face. It's the same set expression he got after he collected all of their father's coffee mugs out of his study to wash. It's the same as the one he showed their father when he came home to find their mother dead. It's the same one as when he promised, his pinky wrapped around Min's, _I won't tell anyone about you._

"I don't want to hear it," hyung says.

"You have to. It's important." Min struggles, discarding pride and Joon-young and caution, and reaches for hyung's hand. Hyun slaps him down, recoiling as though he's never wanted Min's touch in his life, and the disgust on his face, from the one person he always hoped would never look at him like this, is more than he can stand. "Don't send me away. You have to listen to me. Don't --"

"I don't have to," Hyun snaps. He's weeping again. "Leave. Go. Enough. I've had _enough._ Just go."

He shuts himself in the bathroom again, door banging and the lock so, so loud.

Min gets dressed. It takes a long time. Hyung doesn't come out. He has to find his clothes and get them on in the right order. Hyung was so eager to get him to bed that they were thrown around. Their plates are still cooling on the table, Min's portion half-eaten and congealing. It feels like they ate a long time ago, like this is a capsule of time and as soon as Min leaves it will all speed up to correct for his absence.

He doesn't want to leave. It howls in him. He doesn't want to leave. Min thought he lost hyung before and it didn't feel like this.

But there is a thud in him too, there is a pulse and a mind and a self in him, and it is all Joon-young's. Hyung wanted them, but Min didn't have them to give. They weren't his to give.

Now hyung doesn't want any of him.

***

There's a child on his doorstep, small and vaguely unwashed.

Min halts, swallowing a lump of phlegm. Doing his makeup in the car was hard enough when he couldn't stop bawling. But _children._ Children are even worse. "What?"

"Mum's away."

He takes two steps forward and the automatic light shows what Min suspected: it's one of the children from next door, the middle one. They've been unattended every time Min's looked through their window for weeks now. "So?" It cracks. Min fishes a balled up tissue out of his pocket and blots his eyes and tries again. "So what?"

"So I don't know how to fix the toilet," the child says. "I'm not strong enough to turn off the water."

Three children and no supervision. Min can well imagine the destruction.

Who to call? Joon-young? No. Hyung? No. Eun-bok? No. Chun-seok? No.

"I don't have any plans to do anything tonight except watch Monkey," Ja-hee tells him even before he says hello. "I'm not going to do anything, forget it."

Min tells her, more or less, that there is a small, smelly child on his doorstep and he is not facing that bathroom alone. He sounds awful and he knows she'll know.

"I fucking hate you," Ja-hee says. "Give me a minute."

She lives at least twenty minutes away. Min uses the time to leave the child outside, change clothes, and grab supplies -- throwaway rags, cleaning supplies, face masks, gloves -- and venture into the neighbour's house. The door's been propped open with a stick, and when Min looks for a latch he finds it broken off in a filthy dish. Under his feet is a wealth of decaying envelopes, most of them red-stamped and built against the wall like a wasp's nest.

Probably there's a clue somewhere in there about where the adults have run off to. It's a distraction, at least. _That's what I'm for_ rings in his ears. He shakes it off. "Where's your father?"

"Incheon, I guess," the child says. "He got a new lady."

Min picks up letters, dried mud and brittle leaves flaking as he rubs at the return addresses. A bank, a rental office, a bank, a bank, a likely place of employment, a bank. The oldest letter he can find is dated a month ago. A month ago he was looking forward to hyung coming back so much he had a private, unsynced calendar on his phone so he could check it every day.

Enough. Enough. Details. Focus. If he can't have hyung anymore, at least he can try not disappoint Joon-young with being unobservant.

The child's hair is too long for it only being a month, and the other signs of neglect are older still -- a hanging cobweb, dust topping umbrella handles, a grubby layer of dirt on the floor and walls.

The child is fidgeting, and it's not a normal witness fidget of embarrassment or reluctance to speak. This is the fidget of injunction, of being told to keep a secret from someone they want to trust with it. Something too large for their minds to contain, so it leaks around the edges, leaks into their bodies. Min is sure that if he touched the child's shoulder, he would find it tense as a strongman poised to break records. He knows the feeling.

There's a mustiness, too. A ticklish mustiness of closed doors, like opening a fridge abandoned without power for an entire summer and feeling it roll up his body and through his face, into his mouth, like a physical wave. Down the hall there is only one closed door. It's not the bathroom. That he can see well enough, with its smears of faeces and yellow-stained tiles.

It's far from the first time Min's seen something like this; he spent enough time volunteering in the domestic departments as a law student. They all had to. Usually it's on paper, but even in person with fewer details it's clear enough. At some point, the money ran out. Supports failed. Pressures grew, and a person already under strain broke.

"How long has your mother been dead?"

The child screams, high and frightened, and runs into the depths of the house.

Hyung and Joon-young would have done better somehow. He doesn't have the trick of children. But it's his doorstep and his neighbour. He's here and they're not.

Min opens the door. It goes easily enough. And inside, the hanging, cloying welter of rot, floorboards rippled and stained by putrefaction.

From here it's easy to understand why she chose this bedroom as hers. It gives a vantage into almost every room off the hallway. There is one phone that he can see, abandoned on the floor and handset off the hook, crammed half-under a cabinet edge. Wire hangs loose from the phone itself and when he checks it it's been pulled out of its socket, the head still stuck.

From here, if he wanted to stop children from using the phone, but it keep somewhere accessible in an emergency --

Min steps onto a chair and looks at the top of the fridge. It's plain to see in the lack of dust where it used to be.

A simple sequence of events to put together. A fall, for whatever reason. Drunkenness, despair, drugs, whichever. One phone the children knew how to use and it broke. Perhaps she was alive for a while to give instruction but too shamed by the situation to accept outside help. Then death and last wishes for secrecy, carried out by the incapably young.

It's a lovely little story tied up with a scissor-primed bow.

Min goes back to the closed bedroom and that stench and looks again.

On the wall, by the rotting bundle of slumped hyacinths, a portrait again. One of Min's. With his signature.

Below it, a scrawled row of cipher. The exact cipher he and Joon-young decided was best to get hyung's attention and point his way, back when Min had a plan and a decision and a need and that need was _remember me,_ inscribed in bodies and coffins and shipping manifestos. It was all ready for Min, but Min never initiated. Min got hyung's touch and how it felt to fuck hyung instead. He got hyung saying _I feel the same_ while inside Min, while water ran down on them both. But that's not true anymore.

Joon-young.

Joon-young, at some point in some visit or other, saw it. He saw the children and the situation and he decided. Or he saw the children and the body and decided.

Either way. Either way, Min is next door with a room full of paintings that look exactly like the one now on the wall. Exactly like the one on Kang Ji-seo's wall.

A painting hyung won't ignore either.

The hyacinths are purple.

Min doesn't know what he did to Joon-young to deserve this.

He leaves the house after that, puts down the mail and the bucket of supplies and stands outside, his mask hanging around his neck. They're three children who've been trying to feed themselves for a while now; even if they did try to move the body to hide it, they wouldn't succeed.

Min doesn't call Joon-young or Eun-bok. They'll hear of it if it applies to them; if not, then not. Instead he asks Ja-hee to make the call for him.

The police arrive a little after she does. After that the night is a wash of blue lights and vests and giving statements, of his house being surrounded by harried parking jobs and ignoring nudges from officers to provide refreshments, of the middle child sitting on his foot with their legs around his ankle and refusing to move. It's enough hustle and bustle that he can sneak a moment to tell himself to stop fucking crying and touch up his makeup. At least the tears sell his shocked-alarmed-neighbour story.

Ja-hee and the children and Ja-hee's rangy twin albatrosses all take up occupancy in Min's house for the night. It's the simplest approach, the officers explain; someone will be by to take statements and take them off their hands in the morning.

Washing and scrubbing the children and dressing them in clothes retrieved from the house is only a three-person job, and Min is glad of the others taking over. It gives him time to make up beds for all of them after some brief planning over the children's wet heads. His guest room can accommodate the children and the twins rotating duty shifts, one in the room and one on the couch, and Ja-hee can sleep with him.

Five defrosted packages of Joon-young's meals later and the children are in bed, the oldest twin is in there with them, the younger curled with her phone on Min's couch, and Ja-hee is yawning and brushing at the sleeves of her uniform.

He must have called her while she was still at the prison for her to still be wearing it. "Did I interrupt your shift?"

"I was off for the night, no big deal." She rubs the back of her neck. "Go to bed first, I'll shower and come in later. I'm wet anyway."

Min doesn't exactly mean to wait up for her, but he does, dozing and drifting and not quite asleep. She climbs in as forthrightly as she does everything else, bed creaking and blankets yanking, and Ja-hee wriggles on her back, growling under her breath and punching his pillow until she makes a noise Min remembers. It's one of the ones he knows best. She said very little when she lived with them and mostly communicated through an array of grunts when she wasn't screaming back at Joon-young. Most of the ones he heard meant _bad idea_ or _no way in hell_. This one means _fine okay whatever_.

"You know you're gonna get stuck with cleaning up that house, right? You're going to inhale bleach and hallucinate fairies with _huge_ dicks."

The idea is horrifying. Joon-young cleans. _Hyung_ says he likes cleaning. Min does the barest he can get away with for himself. For a dead woman and her squalling smelly albatrosses? " _No._ "

"Knew you were awake," Ja-hee says. "So … do we call him?"

"No," Min says again. "I don't think so. As far as I know it was an accident of circumstance that it began at all. Look at their clothes. Much better quality than hers. Their food too. It's not enough to get him involved."

"Used to be you'd always say yes if I ever asked you stuff like that. Even if I just said, like, 'do we call him', you'd be right on it. You'd dial him up right away. Now you're like, 'no, no, let's not'? Really? What's up?"

"He put my painting in her bedroom," Min mumbles. It's the least of what happened today, but it eats at him. At least what happened with hyung was -- clean. It was words and feelings but mostly words, words, words. This is all of Joon-young's unsaid expectations. "One of the ones you hate."

"He fucking _what_?" Ja-hee twists around, blankets pulling right off and wrapping around her in an angry roll of featherdown and acrylic crochet. "Motherfucker. Oh, that motherfucker, I'm gonna -- fuck, it's too late to grab that one now, it's in the pictures. Fuck. _Fuck_. We have to get the rest of them out of here."

"The only one with room to keep them is him," Min says.

"I will fucking _fill_ my bedroom with them. I'll sleep standing up. Come on. They're coming tomorrow. We can't waste time. Get up. _Get up_!"

"They'll notice," Min protests.

Ja-hee rolls her eyes and pulls a shirt over her head, yanking hard, and the buttons burst. "For fuck's sake, why are you so fucking scrawny? Look at this!"

Min gives her one of his undershirts and she pulls the shirt over that, tying it at her waist, and paces while he dresses.

"All right, fine. All right. Let's -- all right. I've still got my car in your driveway. I'll back it up. The twins can keep the kids quiet. Go start wrapping them up."

Ja-hee has a way of making things seem easy, making them _be_ easy, and somehow this is too.

She backs the car up the neighbour's driveway, lifting the hatch to hide the door, and they do it through the neighbour's side of things, passing paintings over the fence. There's enough activity back and forth, including boxes of the children's things passing to Min's house, to sow confusion. It's the way a change con works, and Min supposes Ja-hee would know how it's done.

They fill the back of her car with the most incriminating paintings, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, and she drives off to unpack at her flat. Meanwhile he arranges the rest of the work to make it seem like he simply doesn't paint a lot and the twins both shut themselves in with the kids and keep them in the room to avoid any mixed-up stories.

Two hours after he told her the twins have switched positions, he and Ja-hee are both back in Min's bed, undressed again, and it's fixed for the time being. He asked for her help, even if implicitly, and she made it so. Just like that. It's the third time she's done it for him tonight.

Min's never been so decisive in his life. He deliberates and thinks and drags, drags, drags until someone, usually Joon-young, takes it out of his hands. He's never been someone who thinks _do this_ and follows it with _this is done._ Until today, he supposes. But that was a collaboration with hyung's emotions.

"I don't appreciate you enough," Min tells her.

"You really don't." She huffs and yawns, pulling the blankets up to her ear. "So what's up with you? You've been way less prickly than usual."

"What makes you think there's something?"

She glares at him over her shoulder. "Don't even. I know your 'wah someone said no to me but I really wanted it wah wah' face. You've been bawling your eyes out. Confess."

It's easier when she faces away again, when she's lumped under his blankets. "I had a fight with -- I suppose -- if I'm to be honest, I had a fight with my …" No. He's promised her honesty. "There was a breakup with --" He halts again. It occurs to him he doesn't know how Ja-hee feels about this. He's never asked. He's never thought to ask; he's always assumed she would be fine. More than fine, and now it's come to it, he can't explain why he thought that.

"A goat?" Ja-hee says brightly. "Old lady overcharging for oranges? Is your rubbish bin having an affair with the recyclables?"

"My _boyfriend_ ," Min sighs. He doesn't have anything left to withhold after he's broken so much already. "Not a goat. Or a bin. My boyfriend. Don't tell him."

She shuffles onto her front and puts her hand on his arm. "He doesn't know?"

"I don't know. I hope not." Min exhales. "I hope not. It's not someone he'd like. But I liked him," and the memory of how much he'd _hurt_ hyung makes his throat close and his eyes water, and he tucks his chin as though it can stave off how much it hurts to have hurt him. "I liked him very much."

"If he finds out it won't be because of me," Ja-hee says. "Who else knows?"

This is the other reason why he never deleted her number: there's something about her that's so hyung-like in its practicality. She reminds him of all the good parts of hyung. "A coworker of mine, Chun-seok. I've talked to him about him a couple of times. But I never called him my boyfriend before," Min admits.

"Well, it sounds nice when you say it, so you really must like him," Ja-hee says. "Just that guy knows?"

He thinks back. "There's one of his that works at the hotel. He's set her to look in on us a few times when I visit him. I don't know if she suspects. Eun-bok talks to her."

"Eun-bok talks to everyone. All right, that sounds like Seo-hyun. I'll call her tomorrow, see what she's said. I've got you. Okay? And I'm sure your guy's got you. And if he doesn't I'll beat him up." She raises a fist and waves it under his nose. "I'll bash his face in and make him cry like you made Eun-bok cry. Now go the fuck to sleep."

Min grabs her wrist, bewildered anew. "I made him cry?"

"His favourite hyung trapped him in a car in the middle of the road," she says squarely. "You'd cry too if I tried to kill you."

"I wouldn't," Min says automatically, and then he stops and thinks about it.

Really, truly thinks about it, looking at the tail of Ja-hee's hair and feeling her arm relaxed in his hand. He thinks about if she turned on him like she never quite warmed to Joon-young, all vengeance and spite. He thinks about knowing she wanted him dead enough to go through with it. For all her forward motion, Ja-hee is a lazy person who would rather let a mosquito feed off her cheek than risk missing a moment of television. For killing him to be so important it is one of those _to-do is-done_ tasks -- for her to feel like that about killing him, to do it --

He would expect it of a stranger on the street more than he would expect it of her.

"I would," Min says, bewildered again by his own sentiment. "You're right." Did hyung feel like this about Min tonight, then? An unexpected attack from an unexpected quarter? But hyung started it. If he hadn't overreacted to a few bruises it wouldn't have happened.

Ja-hee stretches and settles with a smug wriggle of her shoulders. "I love that. 'You're right'. So damn good. I'm a good big sister, hey?"

Min looks at the profile of her face. The angle of her nose where her father broke it. The rough patches on her forehead. "I know I'm not like normal people, but I think --" Hyung, touching him. _I feel the same._ His own words, _forever, just like this._ "I think I love him. Did you know I could?" he asks her, very quiet.

"Of course I know. Okay? Of course, little bro. Don't frown like that, I'm too tired to fight. Up to here. Go to sleep already. I'm sorry about your boyfriend."

***

Of course the initial lot of police noticed the ciphers, so now the next round brings, as one would expect, the task force investigating a similar set of ciphers. That means Eun-bok, who still hasn't answered Min's question.

They stand outside on Min's walkway after an exhausting round of interviews, Eun-bok's fingertips jammed into his jean pockets. It's a bright morning. Too bright for the wreck Min is. His eyes are gritty and his head hurts and he might have cried in his sleep, he isn't sure; Ja-hee's side of the bed was cold when Min woke up. Normally Min would have texted him by now to say good morning, and if not then hyung would. But hyung hasn't and Min hasn't, and hyung won't. He won't.

It's the first time in twenty years or so that Min isn't waiting on hyung in some way, and the knowledge that he did it to himself only makes it all the more unreal.

How did it go from hyung's tongue inside him to that? He can trace it when he thinks back, how each response slotted in, one after the other. But it doesn't answer how. It doesn't tell him why, or what he can do to fix it.

He misses him already.

"You'd never be that sad about motherless children, hyung," Eun-bok says.

Min nods. "It's my own business. So?"

"So they'll be out of your hands by the afternoon. By tonight you won't have to pretend to be concerned for their welfare."

Eun-bok is a fistful of razors, Min reminds himself. "Am I really your favourite?"

"Sort of. It's not because of what you do, hyung," Eun-bok says. "It's what you're don't. You've never treated me like I shouldn't have been so sick. Even the others, most of them don't manage that."

"He says it's not a competition," Min says.

Eun-bok smiles, thin-lipped. "Sure. I remember. Anyway, this isn't what I wanted to talk about."

Min waits him out. The sky is a clear, clean blue and Min is bereft of the means to appreciate it.

"David Lee noticed the paintings."

It takes a moment for Min to remember the English name hyung uses. It takes another moment for Min to remember that as far as he knows, hyung was in no state to go anywhere and look at a crime scene photos. It's not impossible that he might've seen the pictures from last night, but it's extremely unlikely. "More than one painting?"

"Two. Three now," with a gesture to the neighbours. "One in Kang Ji-seo's flat, and another in the flat of a guy we found a couple weeks ago. Do you remember anything about an Attorney Ahn in your office? He would've been in your department."

"Not particularly. There's someone with that name, but he's not useful. If there was one in his flat, it wasn't because I wanted it there."

Eun-bok looks over. "You're saying he's putting them up?"

"Sometimes he finds one he likes. I don't keep track." Min folds his arms, a chill sneaking under the cuffs of his shirt. Attorney Jang accepted _neighbour is dead and I'm hosting their children_ as a three-hour excuse, but he has to leave soon and they're still talking inside. "I didn't have to."

"This is a frame job," Eun-bok says quietly. "The ciphers, the paintings, they're all there. The forensics are going to come back that she was murdered and every victim has at least a tenuous connection to you. Are you sure, are you _very_ sure, that there is nothing more you need to tell me?"

Joon-young framing him.

His stomach lurches. Min hadn't put it together like that. He didn't _want_ to put it together, he didn't want to have to think about Joon-young doing this, using Min to lure hyung, forcing Min's hand. He didn't want to have to think about losing them, one way or another.

But he's lost one already, and the remainder is Joon-young. Min asked Joon-young for help, not this. If Joon-young hadn't intervened it would've been worse, but what good can come of this? Is it just pushing him and hyung together? Whose hand is he forcing?

Those damned flowers. Hyung doesn't _remember_. But the paintings -- hyung would remember that. Hyung would figure out the ciphers too. But he doesn't remember their mother and neither has he realised Min is Sun-ho, or Sun-ho, Min. He would tell Min if he did. He wouldn't be able to keep it from him. Even if things stay like this Min is sure hyung would call.

If Joon-young keeps _pointing_ like this, like Min intended before he made that decision to approach hyung at that bar years ago, then all the rest of Min's efforts will go to waste and hyung will have to call him after all. It's not a good thought, not like it should be. Hyung is too clever. Joon-young is too clever and, it seems, tired of waiting. Tired of Min.

It all feels like a box being screwed shut around him. "I didn't know there were other ciphers."

"They both had them. David Lee worked them out. Do you know what this one says?"

"It's latitude and longitude." Min's never been the best spatial thinker, what he knows comes from art and anatomy lessons, but he can triangulate at least. "Somewhere in Young-dong. He hasn't seen it yet?"

"Didn't pick up his phone. I'll try again when we get back to the station." Eun-bok offers his phone open to an online map. "Can you show me where?"

"I have a paper map," Min says.

Eun-bok follows him inside to Min's bedroom, telling the others he wants to interview Min again privately, and Min squats down and finds it wedged in the second layer behind a row of the military fiction Joon-young likes.

He smooths the cover and thumbs it open to the country map, then the district map, searching against his mental reference, and finally he finds the right page. Eun-bok waits, his hands still in his pockets. "Around here," Min says, circling his finger. "Will you remember?"

Eun-bok leans over and reads out the landmarks, thumbnail underlining their names. He smells like the same cologne so many young men use, vaguely salty. Hyung never wore anything like that. He didn't need to. All the salt Min wanted from him, he could taste on his skin while they had sex.

But that was then. He needs to adjust. That was then.

"Are you okay, hyung?" Eun-bok's thumb is on the final line and it stays there, pressing a crease into the paper, and he doesn't turn his head or move his eyes to Min. "You're worse than last time. You look like when we found Seo-jin and Hyun-woo."

For a moment he didn't remember, and then he did. Those two. Eun-bok was leaving, his term secured, and Joon-young found replacements, a pair whose parents collaborated in their abuse and several months later Eun-bok was over for dinner and they in turn collaborated in hanging themselves with a skipping rope.

They had two chapters left in the maths book Min was tutoring them from and Min was so angry at the waste of his time he broke into the school that night and arranged every single skipping rope they had by length, and when that wasn't enough he broke into the textbook storage and ordered them by subject and year.

"I'm not angry this time," Min says. He doesn't know what his face looks like for Eun-bok to say that. "Did Ja-hee put you up to this?"

"We don't gang up on you as much as you think we do, hyung," Eun-bok says. "She told me you were having a hard time."

Min stands up. The closed door and window is reassuring. Nowhere is safe to talk about this, but he's finding that, perhaps, there are safer people. People who can keep pieces safe. Not everything, but pieces. "What did you tell her?"

"I said you were. She said it was worse than I knew. Is it, hyung?"

What Eun-bok knows is damning enough. Min's aware of that. But he nods despite himself. "It's been another long day." Eun-bok turns, eyes going straight to Min's throat and fixing there. "Not like that. Just -- long."

"Not because of the kids." Eun-bok raises an eyebrow, like it was a question.

"No. I found out I can do things I didn't know I could do. That's all it is."

"That's really ominous, hyung," Eun-bok says. He steps closer, puts a single firm hand on Min's back. It's the same touch as when they were crammed together on his floor, a small, ungenerous hand. "This is okay?"

"Yes." Min doesn't shrug. He doesn't want to shake him off. Ja-hee is so much a person, so much of herself in her skin, and if she tried to touch him it would be too much pressed on him, too much skin and personality and self against his, and he would say something -- do things -- he would regret it afterwards. He would. This is easier. It doesn't demand anything of him other than staying still, and that Min knows how to do.

"Okay. Let's just be here a while."

Eun-bok doesn't move his hand and Min doesn't move either. He listens to the clock tick, the distant voices downstairs. Ja-hee's familiar blustering harangue. One of the children crying in that thin, fretful tone able to carry through floors and concrete and distance. He listens to Eun-bok breathing so regularly that Min is sure he's listening to the clock too.

None of it should help as much as it does. But there comes a time when it doesn't hurt so much that he's still breathing, a time when his eyes don't burn. When it feels like he could, if he wanted to, stand straighter and mock Chun-seok and drink coffee. Read a case, defend in court, drink more coffee. Tolerate that the world continues to rotate exactly when it ought to be as frozen as Min.

Min rehearses in his head. He's not sure of the right cadence. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe it doesn't need one.  He takes a deep breath, deeper than any he's been able to manage since he walked out of hyung's hotel room, and breaks the contact of his hand. "Thank you."

"No problem." Eun-bok picks up the map as though nothing has happened. "I'll need to remember this." He squints. "Here, right, hyung?"

He sets his shoulders and discovers he doesn't sound like he's been weeping anymore. A cold, or aspiration, or lack of sleep -- all excusable, normal things, things he can take to work and explain away. "Yes, there. But don't contact me about it."

"I know the rules better than you, hyung," Eun-bok says. He shuts the map and hands it back. "I'll go first."

Min stands there a moment, listening to the clock. The stretch of going to the floor and reaching to put the book back feels like having Eun-bok's hand again.

The last time he lost hyung he was a child alone. No resources, no fallback, no system of favours and debts. Last time he had nothing but Joon-young. Now he's an adult with favours and strings and an education, a career. He has connections. He's not five. It doesn't fix it. It doesn't get him hyung back, it doesn't change the past or help him find a way to having hyung again, much less how to deal with Joon-young. All of the problems and the helplessness are the same except for one.

Min doesn't know the relevant definitions, if any. There's no blood relation. No legal relation. Nothing in any law Min knows, even the ones about cohabitation. There's no legal article to define how she came when he asked and how Eun-bok helped him breathe. How he would be so surprised if Ja-hee did turn on him. How familiar it felt to rub the stiffness out of his scar tissue after so long.

Hyung left him again. But this time he isn't locked in a car. This time he isn't alone with Joon-young.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some sexual boundary lines are very much crossed in this chapter. I think it's an emotionally intense one as well, so please take breaks when you need them and look after yourselves. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!

Ja-hee and Eun-bok don't get along.

He's never seen them in the same place before and while they keep it professional in front of police officers and the social worker and every child, the wealth of unearned, unasked-for information he acquires over the course of the morning tells its own tale in sniper-quick disagreements.

Eun-bok dislikes natto which Ja-hee loves. Eun-bok dislikes beer but Ja-hee loves it. Ja-hee loves television, Eun-bok thinks television is a waste of time. Ja-hee thinks video games are uninteresting, Eun-bok can defend in specific detail every character in something called FIFA. Eun-bok thinks there's no good music made after 1999, Ja-hee loudly proclaims something or other is the greatest bubble trance track ever. They have nothing in common other than opinions on the criminal justice system and being Joon-young's children.

Min finds it strange to watch them talk, careful and intimate. He doesn't know how they arrived at enough common cause to collaborate like this while being so vociferously _different_ from one another. They aren't quiet about their differences and they snap, but it doesn't have the edge Min expects. The snapping is mutual, the disagreement is mutual. There's no spite. They don't hide they've encountered each other before, that they know each other well.

The obvious reason is forced cohabitation, but Ja-hee is Joon-young's pariah child and Eun-bok would never do such a thing -- Joon-young would disapprove. It must be something else. Mutual agreements? A common cause? Practice?

There's never been a reason to learn this sort of cooperation. Things don't work that way for him. But the way hyung reacted, the way everything fell down so quickly -- maybe that was because he doesn't know how to do this. He's not sure Chun-seok counts as someone he is like this with. Is that also tolerating each other for common goals? Does wanting to keep hyung count as a common goal if hyung wants to keep him too?

So many things he can never ask Joon-young.

"So the stepmother wants to take them and dad's reluctant but on board," Ja-hee concludes. "Sounds like the best we can hope for."

The social worker shrugs, hands linked, anxiety lining the edges of her lipstick. "Pretty much. Have they told you anything more, officer?"

Eun-bok puts his notepad away, sliding his pen behind his ear. "If it was premeditated, I don't think they heard or saw any of it. We might have to interview them later but I think the taskforce has everything for now."

"That's something, at least. It's such a trauma already, losing your mother so young." Min has nothing to say to that, only betraying bitterness. Eun-bok makes a noise so noncommittal the social worker jumps to her feet. "Well, I'll take them with me after you've all signed off."

There's still the ruffle of paper and the beep of electronic signatures and far too much wailing after that, but eventually the police gather a box of things and the social worker leaves with it and the children, Ja-hee gives the twins her car keys to wait with the radio, and there is _quiet_ in his house again.

Min can't help but relax. "Did you hear from David Lee?"

"About half an hour ago. He says the same thing you did. Somewhere in Young-dong."

Ja-hee folds her arms. "Don't tell me too much. I'll take the twins to school and you can go do your lawyer thing and you can do whatever it is you do."

"Electronic investigative specialist," Eun-bok says.

The three of them dawdle in Min's entry way. Mostly, he suspects, because Min is dawdling and they're more polite than he is. He doesn't want to go to work yet. He wants more moments, more of the three of them in the same room with no Joon-young and no obligations. He likes listening to them, watching them be close. Joon-young wouldn't want Ja-hee to have anything to do with Min and he hasn't had a chance to order Eun-bok away yet. They're here for Min. It would be collegial, if Min had colleagues instead of intolerable nuisances.

Someone nudges his shoulder and he looks over to find Ja-hee frowning, one shoe laced and an arm through her jumper. "It bothers me too," she says. "Like, what's that actually mean? It could be one of those sham titles and you just fix computers."

"Sung-jae fixes computers. _I_ look at phone records, government records, credit cards. Location traces. Things like that."

"Sounds boring," Ja-hee says. She nudges Min again. "Boring, right?"

"I'm not participating in this," Min says. It comes out pathetically weak.

Eun-bok's mouth twitches but mercifully he doesn't comment. "You sit around and watch prisoners all day."

"At least they talk back. And I get to read real books. Not that e-ink shit."

"That e-ink shit," Eun-bok says, "is why my flat still has a floor. I live with Ji-hoon. You know how many books he has."

"Up to here," Min interrupts. He vaguely remembers Ji-hoon as a scrap of a child, there and gone to an orphanage, and he doesn't care to know more. He's already learned enough about them as people that he's having trouble letting them go. "I have to go to work. Get out of my house."

When they don't move Min reaches past them, opens the door, shoves, and locks it on Eun-bok's frown and Ja-hee's protests. One of Ja-hee's shoes is still inside and Eun-bok's forgotten his scarf. He doesn't care.

For a moment he is alone in his house again. He just needs a moment alone to savour being _alone_ and the difference between alone and with them. It's more than he expected.

He misses them, even though they're on the other side of the door. It feels good and strange all at once. He lost hyung yesterday, more or less, and now he's alone -- they're on the other side of a locked door, they could very well walk off and leave him -- yet he's not feeling what he expected to feel.

Min expected to be crushed, destroyed, demolished. He expected to wake and find himself scrabbling for words and thought. He expected to open his eyes and lie there until someone physically pulled him out, the way Joon-young had to when Min was young. He expected to have to be spoon-fed, his jaw manually shut to eat, manually opened to put in more food. He expected to be useless. To have to quit his job by absence, quit everything by absence, and lie sulking in the street until the cold killed him.

But he doesn't.

He doesn't know how anything at all can feel good now, much less _people._ He doesn't know how he ate under his own power, how he got out of bed during the night to move his artwork, how he bothered to properly wrap the works. He doesn't know how he's capable of breathing without screaming.

But here he is, breathing without screaming.

Min opens the door again, bracing himself, but they're on the other side, looking at something noisy on Ja-hee's phone. Not gone. Still here. Min didn't expect to be grateful for something so small.

He allows them to grab their things and they flank him to the street, mercifully quiet until there's an abrupt, mechanical tone and Eun-bok checks his phone, mouth pursed. "That's my supervisor. David Lee found an address. I'll call you both later."

Does Eun-bok like hyung? Does Eun-bok like anyone? Min has no idea.

"David, is it?" Ja-hee rubs her hands together. "I can work with that."

"Don't you dare," Eun-bok says, lengthening his stride. There's already a tight pinch between his eyebrows. "Really."

"Daaaaaave," Ja-hee sings, beaming.

"I hate that so much," Eun-bok mumbles, the wind blowing back his words. "I really hate that. You know I hate it. It's _David_!"

Ja-hee darts past Min, hopping beside Eun-bok. "Oh, _Davie,_ okay, I'm so sorry, I didn't hear you right." No-one's ever been that carefree with Min. Hyung maybe, when they were very small. Before their mother's murder. Not since.

"David! Da-vid. Don't nickname people you're not friends with."

"Didn't you know, little bro? A stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet," Ja-hee chirps, her voice carrying perfectly as they separate on the street.

It's the most blatant lie Min's ever heard. Joon-young's full of strange platitudes and Min's heard all of them but even he never said something so ridiculous.

Eun-bok heaves a sigh so deep Min can see it through his coat and gets into the police car and Ja-hee laughs and opens her door.

Is this friendship, what they have? Is that friendship too, disliking one another but tolerating it?

His phone vibrates after he buckles up. Nothing from hyung, but a heart sticker from Ja-hee with almost the correct anatomy. _fighting!!!_

 _You asked me if you were a good sister,_ Min texts back, peripherally aware of Ja-hee in the driver's seat of her car, her red phone case held up above the wheel. He could never say this to her face. But like this, separated by cases of metal and glass and the way his windshield warps her face ever so slightly, it's easier to finish. _I don't have better._

She replies immediately.

_when I said ofc I meant this^_

_luv u 2 bro_

"I never said that," Min says. It's too loud in the closed space, too emotional, and he shifts in his seat. Is that what he said? He reads his own text again, his and hers, and he doesn't see it. All he sees is unnecessary sentiment and her being a know it all about nothing as usual.

Min doesn't return her thumbs up as she passes him. Her grin is too wide. It makes her look like a split turnip and he doesn't want to associate with it.

But he doesn't … mind, exactly, if she takes it that way. He doesn't mind. Perhaps that means she's right. He doesn't know. All he knows is that it feels not bad to read that last line even with its awful slang. It's not bad.

***

Chun-seok's already started in on the defense workups when Min gets there, papers out of order and fanned halfway down the conference table while he stands on a chair and squints with his hands on his knees.

For a moment Min doesn't understand anything in the slightest and then he sees the poster on the wall. _STUCK? LOOK DIFFERENTLY_ in bright colours. Chun-seok is the most literal person Min knows, so of course he took it literally. The idiocy is incredible. He works with idiots and spoiled upstarts who got through school still believing being an attorney is _easy._

He's three hours late, Attorney Kang just tried to upbraid him for the delay the one hand and sit him down for a talk about work-life balance on the other, and the person he works mostly closely with right now is Chun-seok, who is so impulsive he doesn't even take off his shoes before he stands on chairs.

His laugh is startling. He didn't know he was going to laugh, but now that he is he can't stop.

Chun-seok slips, steps on the table, and scrabbles, somehow, to stand on the floor, his tie over his shoulder and his jacket over his head, his foot caught up behind him on the edge of the table. He's so wide-eyed, his hands held frozen in front of him, that Min has to cover his mouth and turn away.

"I was gone three hours," Min says, the remnants of giggling a fresh wet in the corners of his eyes and a spaciousness in his mouth like he could smile again someday if he wanted to. "This is what you're reduced to without me?"

"Asshole," Chun-seok squeaks. "Fucking _asshole_!" He hops, freeing his foot, and smooths his clothes. But it doesn't make him look any less startled, or the memory any less potent, and Min covers his mouth again. "Stop it, seriously. You weren't even here, I had to do something. Jesus, that was scary. Where the fuck were you, anyway?"

Min leans against the wall. He doesn't know what this feeling is. The papers are such a _mess_ and his system has gone completely unregarded -- all his careful tabs mixed up and probably on the wrong papers now to boot, and there are shoeprints on the chair, and Chun-seok's whining is shrill and peremptory like an oversprayed heiress. It should all bother him. It should be more annoying than it is.

It shouldn't feel like there's hope, but it does. Min can still laugh. Min can still find Chun-seok funny. If that's the same, then maybe the things hyung wanted about Min, the things hyung said he liked -- maybe they're still the same too, and hyung doesn't want to get rid of all of him, just the parts that hurt him. Maybe he can get rid of them and have him back.

Maybe it wasn't forever. Just … for now. Maybe if Min texted him, promised to be better, he would read it. Maybe he would answer.

"Some trouble with a neighbour," Min says, and pulls out his phone. "You obviously didn't get anywhere. Fix the mess. I'm getting coffee."

"Asshole," Chun-seok calls after him, and Min hears the rustle of paper as he leaves. This week the good machine is on the eighth floor, tucked up in the old vehicle licensing archives, and Min wipes down a dusty mug and sips, staring at the blinking cursor of his text box.

He calls, instead.

Hyung answers.

Min leans hard, the corner of a filing cabinet jabbing his hip. He doesn't know what to say. He can hear hyung's breathing, but he doesn't know what to say. Hyung answered. He hoped, but he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure.

"I guess I'll start," hyung says. He sounds weary. He's had dairy again. "There's a murder scene near you. I'll take a look at the scene today. Will you be there?"

"Do you want me to be?"

"If I didn't, I wouldn't be asking. Think about your questions a little more."

Min wants to say he doesn't deserve that tone, but after yesterday it's likely he does, this and worse, and he swallows hard. Hyung's voice. It's like the first time hyung called him, a raw gift he doesn't know how to shape, a gift that makes his bones hollow with want. "I'm at work today. Tonight?"

There's a pause, terrible in its length. "In the evening? Are you sure?"

Min _has_ been avoiding this. The question and the answer both. The first time, when he picked up hyung from the bar and took him home and let him sleep over -- that was a wretched mistake, an impulse he shouldn't have indulged. He hasn't had him in his house overnight since, and very rarely in the evening. Joon-young finding them? Joon-young knowing that Min is -- is worse than Joon-young could ever tolerate --

He doesn't want to think about it. "I don't keep track of him."

It's as good as admitting that everything hyung said was right, and Min knows it, and that hyung will know. Min can't apologise; he doesn't know how. What is there to apologise for? He wasn't -- it wasn't that he did anything wrong. Hyung would understand. Hyung said he understood. What he does with his understanding isn't up to Min.

Still, the way hyung cried. That was because of him.

Min really didn't miss the days when talking to hyung was this difficult.

"We don't have to --" Min shuts up as soon as he realises that he has no idea if hyung will ever want to touch him again, even if they do make up or reconcile or whatever it is they're doing. He can't let go of Joon-young, and if hyung makes that the condition, that's it.

It hurts to think of having just a little of him, but that's nothing new.

Hyung would usually say something by now.

"We could just have dinner," Min says.

"Then we will," hyung says. "I'll see you at nine."

He hangs up, saving Min from having to think of something to say, and Min finishes his coffee and puts his phone away, licking his lips as though that could wring some nonexistent warmth out of hyung's voice.

***

"Wow," Chun-seok says, pawing at Min's files. "I think we're done. We're done, right? Oh fuck, we're done. Jesus fuck, we're done. Oh, I need a drink."

Min shakes his head, but even he has to admit that there isn't any more to do. Not just today, but indefinitely. It's not the same as done, of course. New evidence, new phrases, new interviews, anything could happen, but for now, yes. They're done and the rest is elaboration.

They're done, his neck aches, and it's a quarter to eight. "Go, then. Bar's open in fifteen." Min shakes out his arms and sits back. Sometimes he wonders about the business of murder, if it's not only more rewarding than this but less exhausting. The way Joon-young describes it it seems -- easy. Easier than this. Easier than art and much less expensive.

Still, there's some things to be said for having the bones of his defense under his hand in sheaves and ruffled corners and tabbed in order. Good things. Min's not sure he's ever felt satisfaction outside of bed and physical sensation, but sometimes if he works hard at the end there's a bubbling gravity almost like it -- successful client defense, successful case prep, successful translation of an idea to canvas, successfully making hyung laugh.

Especially that last one.

"You worked hard! Don't stay here all night!" Chun-seok cries, snapping his briefcase shut, and breaks into the jiggling run of stiff-soled shoes. "Later, asshole!"

A quarter to eight. He could do some of the paralegal's work for them, make sure they don't fuck it up. He could keep going with the finer points. He could assist with the case Attorney Choi is swearing over in the next room.

Min gets up and checks his phone. Nothing from Joon-young. Or hyung. _I finished work early._

_I'll leave now._

Hyung used to say more. Min guesses he's still angry. But angry and talking is better than no talking at all. He's not gone forever, not like Min thought. Just for a little while, like usual. Gone and still talking to him is enough to work with, even if it's not enough. Even if it's never enough. _See you there._

He bargains a paralegal into updating the intranet files for him and leaves, bypassing the other attorneys and Prosecutor Ha making a fool of himself in Attorney Kang's office.

***

Joon-young is talking to hyung.

Hyung is talking to Joon-young.

They are outside his house, on the strip of lawn where the wall ends. Joon-young on his side, hyung the other, obscured by leaves. But Min knows hyung's back as he drives up and he knows Joon-young's profile as he parks.

They're talking. At Min's house.

There's nothing on his phone. Joon-young just -- decided to come over, and now they're talking. Talking. Is this because he told hyung to come earlier?

Min doesn't know what to do. Still nothing on his phone. He's not sure what help there could be from anyone. 'They're talking, help me'? Ridiculous. Ridiculous and useless and they've _seen him._ They're both turned, watching. Hyung's hands in his pockets and Joon-young's hand uplifted in a gesture, paused as he watches.

From here Min can't tell his mood, what he might be thinking, and he picks up his briefcase and gets out of the car, slamming the door and locking it, and walks up.

"Sun-ho," hyung says first, and he smiles. It's neat and small and reaches his eyes. "I was just talking to your uncle."

"Ah, yes," Joon-young says, with that brief pause he only gets when someone throws him off. "It's terrible what's happened, isn't it?"

"Yes." Hyung's smile switches to politeness and fades. "Sorry to be rude. I was waiting on your nephew for dinner. If you'll excuse us."

Min's torn between delight at someone being rude to Joon-young and fear that it's _hyung_ being rude. He's always been something to Joon-young, something Joon-young doesn't talk about, a need Min knows exist but isn't suited to fill. He doesn't know how Joon-young will take this.

"Here," Min says, offering hyung his keys. "Get comfortable. I've still got some of your food in the freezer, uncle."

"Yes, thank you for your consideration. I'll start defrosting." Rude again. Min bites back a smile.

He doesn't touch Min as he nods to Joon-young and passes between them, but there's a private tilt of his head to the house, in the brief meet of their eyes, that steadies Min. Hyung will be inside, waiting. It helps.

"Since I made your dinner, perhaps I should join you as well. It's not good to never taste my own cooking." Min watches hyung halt, how he lifts his head. His hands in his pockets, his back to them both. "If I am welcome."

"Uncle," Min says. "You didn't call."

"I've always heard family shouldn't need to call." Joon-young gestures to the house, puts his hand on Min's elbow. "It's good to meet a friend of my nephew."

Min doesn't know what hyung sees when he turns around. But his eyes drop, lift and drop again. "I am not as good a friend as I would like. Your nephew is a very busy person."

Joon-young chuckles, his grip so sure through Min's shirt that he knows it's useless to struggle. It would only wrinkle his jacket.

Dinner is what even Min can recognise as awkward. Joon-young heats food on the stove and Min sets the table and hyung pours water into three glasses, exactly level with one another, and then pours a little more into one glass and sets it in front of Min.

It is not something Joon-young will fail to notice. Min likes it anyhow. He likes hyung showing who he's here for.

"You should change," Joon-young tells him. Min doesn't want to leave them alone. He doesn't know how long they were talking for, what they were talking about. He can't see anything from either of them one way or the other. "Get more comfortable. It won't be long."

Min retreats unwillingly and changes as quickly as he can, moving on his quietest feet. If he listens carefully he can hear what goes in the kitchen; Joon-young keeps his hallway panelling polished, calls it relaxing instead of a terrible, smelly chore. There are things he'll never understand about Joon-young.

"Lee Hyun."

"Lee Joon-ho."

"Lee Hyun. What are you really doing here?" Joon-yong sounds skeptical. "The house next door is not so interesting a scene as that, I thought."

"It has relevance to interests of mine," Hyun says. He sounds cold. Composed. It's the same voice as when he asked Min about the pictures. "You know it's not advisable to talk about ongoing investigations."

He closes his bedroom window in case either of them stay tonight and moves back to stand at the top of the stairs.

"I did attend yesterday," Joon-young says, light and pleasant. He and Eun-bok have a similar way of making leading statements. It isn't that Joon-young doesn't have razors and it isn't that Eun-bok fails to hide his. It's just experience, Min supposes. "Did you have questions about the body?"

"If I do have questions later I will see you at the morgue."

"I am often available," Joon-young says. "Especially by appointment. Ah, it's ready. Excuse me."

"No need," hyung says, and Min hears the scrape of a chair.

He's not fast enough to duck back into the bedroom; instead he goes into the bathroom, squinting in the fluorescence to check his concealer.

"Oh." Hyung doesn't sound quite right, and Min looks up, concerned, to find him in the doorway. "I didn't think of that." He closes the door behind him and goes to Min, hands reaching out.

Min swallows and stands still, lets him tilt his head this way and that. "It held up today, but …"

"Yes, I see a couple of patches." Hyung looks up at him through his lashes, still bent down. "He doesn't know?"

"What more is there for him to know?" Min murmurs, absolutely truthful. They're Joon-young's hands and Joon-young's remains.

Somehow that makes hyung look almost as sad as he did last night. "Where's your concealer?" Min presses it into his hand, closing his eyes at the cold daub of hyung's fingertips. "He asked me about my house."

"He's an observant person," Min says.

Hyun makes a noise as expertly noncommittal as Eun-bok's. Min half-wishes he could introduce them all to each other. He's not sure it would go well, but to have them all together -- it would be interesting, at least, to watch hyung watch them, and hyung would make an absolute meal out of Chun-seok, and Joon-young would have to put up with Ja-hee and Eun-bok would play tightrope, and -- and it is fantasy.

It's just fantasy.

"Are you done?"

"Almost. There. Much better." Hyung nudges him and Min opens his eyes, blinking at the cage of hyung's fingers over his face. "Just… it's bright. You had them closed."

"Do you not want me anymore?" Min whispers, wrenched out of him by hyung's consideration, the tender slats of light. He forces himself quiet and reaches for hyung's waist, heedless of everything but the urge to have him close. "Are you finished with me?"

"No. Not finished," hyung whispers back. "I don't want to be. It's complicated. We should do this later. Later, Sun-ho." He pushes his hand away. "Your uncle's waiting."

The door opens smoothly as hyung reaches for it, and there is Joon-young, already smiling, already kind-faced.

A chill sinks his gut to his knees, and he folds his arms, hands stiff in the crease of his elbows. Joon-young almost -- the door was unlocked. It was unlocked, and he was downstairs, and Joon-young could have _seen._

"Oh, there you are. I was waiting so long it nearly burnt."

Will see, if Min isn't careful, and he untucks his hands, angles his thumbnail against his throat, working deep into the skin. It makes the scab he was aiming for shift and break, and Min drops his hand, lifting his shoulder to hide the first sluggish trickle, to work the skin a little. _Come on, come on._ "If my diet isn't satisfactory, Mr. Perfect Skin, now you know who to talk to," Min says, pushing past both of them.

"Your diet?" Joon-young asks.

"People get pimples from stress. It happens. It's not an enormous concern."

"True," hyung says. Min hears them both follow him down the stairs. "Still, it was big. You're still bleeding," and Min relaxes in the knowledge his feint worked.

"It'll dry. Thank you for helping me with it," Min allows, sure to sound as grudging as possible, and he accepts paper towel from Joon-young to blot.

Hyung takes a seat. "Well, shall we start?"

Joon-young sits opposite. Min has no real choice but to sit between them at the head and he draws on the little he remembers of Joon-young playing host, serving them first and checking their drink preferences before they begin. Hyung asks for wine and Min finds an unopened bottle, passing it to Joon-young for seniority. He opens it and pours, happier than Min's ever seen him.

They're watching him as much as each other, and it's more attention that he expected to walk into today. He knew it was possible. Of course he did. Joon-young didn't text him he _wouldn't_ be coming over. Having it still makes his arms prickle and his every action rehearsed as greeting a judge. The two of them are impossible to please on their own. He doesn't know how he can possibly please both of them at once.

"Did you walk the scene?" he asks hyung. Watching his face, the way he holds his chopsticks, is a revelation. Hyung doesn't want to be broken up. If the two of them both don't, then does that mean it never happened? But at the same time, Joon-young is here. Joon-young, watching.

Min looks at Joon-young's placid face, that tiny crease at the corner of his right eye when he's beginning to think something through. His plate is much less appetising than staring at hyung but he eats nevertheless. That crease only means suspicion.

"I did," hyung says, like he was waiting for the interplay to finish, and thinking of hyung watching them is a wrench like showing a work unfinished. "It filled in some gaps for me. I think this killer is an interesting person."

"Ah, you think she was murdered?" Min asks.

Hyun nods. "Of course. The facts show she was murdered and how. It was well done. But not necessary. There was no urgency in the crime. Either this is a person with no social sense whatsoever, or the crime itself was not valuable."

Min doesn't look at Joon-young. "So they were bored? Come to think of it, there are several possible crimes in a case like this. Break and entry, murder, theft…"

"Yes. All to the aim of sending a message. But very casually so." Hyung sits back. "Do you mind if I look in your studio?"

He has a moment to think about _luv u 2 bro_ and the way she reacted when he told her, how else it could have gone if hyung asked him this. How how horrible this this could have been. It's enough time to feel and then carefully fold away abject gratitude. "Not at all."

"You should finish eating first," Joon-young says kindly, and Min finds him speculative and still so pleased, bright-eyed and somehow -- particularly alert.

Joon-young wants to be there, Min realises. He wants to watch. Min makes his smile brighter, makes himself seem eager. "I'd like your opinion on my new briefs."

He watches hyung eye him, watches it flicker -- briefs, or _briefs?_ \-- before he chuckles. "After dinner."

Joon-young raises an eyebrow at him. Min keeps the smile. "Ah, my commissions. He's asked about them before."

"Of course," Joon-young says.

A foot comes to rest against his ankle, toes working beneath the hem of his trousers, and it can't possibly be Joon-young, not at this angle. Hyung doesn't look like he's doing anything but eating; his muscle control is so good that there's no compensatory swing of his hips or shoulders. Min knows what that control feels like inside him, hyung poised atop him but for the rough shift of his cock and the rasp of the pubic hair on his belly.

Min eats, careful to chew slowly. Hyung's toes stroke his ankle, work up to rub the ball of his foot against the back of his calf, and he's half-hard as it is. Knowing they're getting away with it in front of Joon-young makes it all the more difficult not to flush or squirm in his chair.

He's hard. They finish eating, and he's still hard. He resents it.

Min is with two people who, he thinks, like having sex with him. Despite -- everything else, they like it. They might even like the sight of him. He knows Joon-young appreciates him best clothed, and hyung appreciates things about him that Joon-young thinks Min shouldn't show people, and he appreciates both of them in return.

But he doesn't know who wants him more. Who, in this moment, having eaten with them in a bunched-up welter of pretense, he wants to want him more. There's just too much to think about with both of them, and reducing it down to the smallest, simplest thing is easier than considering what happens when they _both_ find out. So much depends on a fragile balance and Min's never been able to resist tipping the scales when they are in his hands. Hyung wants to tease him? Fine. Min can do that too.

He gets up, hyung's foot falling away, and pauses to gather his chopsticks and set his saucer just so on his plate. The edge of the table comes only to mid-thigh and he presses against it just enough to rattle the plates. He tips back his head and leisurely drains both glasses, water and wine. Min thinks they're watching. Watching him, his body. It would be easy enough. His trousers are close-tailored, enough that he can feel his fly shifting over his cock.

When he picks up his dishes he finds hyung wet-lipped, dark-eyed, and Joon-young soft-mouthed with the avid interest most people think means he's about to fall asleep.

"I'll be in the studio," Min says. "It's not tidy."

From there he dumps them in the sink and leaves, success heady.

In the studio he questions himself, wondering if that was too far. Too revealing. They could both assume the show was for them. In fact they should. But he's never quite been sure enough of his shoulds when they are concerned. Certainly not to do that so openly.

It was so risky. It was too much risk. But the look on hyung's face. That was reward enough. And he deserved it for touching him under the table like that in front of someone he believes to be Min's uncle. Hyung's supposed to be the moral one.

He hears the door open and smiles, unsurprised that Joon-young meanders in, face nonspecific, and comes to stand at an angle beside him. Min's holding one of the paintings he finished a few months ago, some impressionist nonsense about withering flowers, and he shifts his grip on it as Joon-young's fingers brush the seat of his trousers, pushing in, the side of his hand a long, delicious stroke along his crack. "That was bold."

"You liked it," Min murmurs, his spine straightening despite himself. "Should I…"

"Yes," Joon-young says. "I think you should."

"Half your pieces are missing, Sun-ho."

Joon-young moves his hand slowly, fixing Min's trousers with a finger beneath his belt. From the angle nothing of his hand could be seen from the doorway but Joon-young is too languid for Min's comfort. An audience would think he was only having a close conversation and nothing more, a familial one. It was the right sort of conversation with the wrong person and the timing was too close. Hyung could have seen.

Min is beginning to think he should -- pull back. Deescalate, before he starts something he can't control. Joon-young's involved now, and he can't control Joon-young with hyung around. Hyung is the wildcard, the ace in the deck, complicating everything. Min swallows, watching Joon-young's movements. How careful and casual they are.

"Ah, are they?" Joon-young looks around, then gives Min one of those _explain yourself_ eyebrow raises. "I wonder."

"I sold quite a few pieces," Min says. "It was too cluttered. I had the ones I didn't want to look at turned to the wall, but they stayed like that. It interfered with my process."

Joon-young's face, the tilt of his head, says _bullshit_ , and Min realises too late what's wrong with Joon-young, icy sweat in the small of his back. Joon-young is furious. He's furious. With Min.

Joon-young had a plan for the paintings after all. Min fucked it up.

Min keeps smiling. He could touch him, try to calm him, feed him something plausible. But he can't. Not in front of hyung.

"Yes, all of these face out," hyung says, wandering around. "You're quite skilled."

"He is," Joon-young says. "A little risky, but that happens with young artists."

Hyung drops to his haunches to examine a smaller painting. "Really? I find it all quite cautious. But then I am friends with an art dealer so my perspective is different."

Min stifles the urge to smile. Hyung's polite veneer is so very thin, like he doesn't know how angry Joon-young is. Maybe he can't tell. Min almost couldn't. "Why did you want to see them?"

"Ah, as I said. There's been unusual paintings showing up at murder scenes these days." Hyung peers at a bit of penciled scrollfern. "Have you had many opportunities to paint lately?"

"I always told him to prioritise his career," Joon-young says. "But of course there must be leisure too."

Hyung puts his hands his pockets. "Naturally. If I might speak to your nephew alone?"

"Haven't you?" Joon-young neatens one of Min's cuffs, tugs his jacket out of its crease at his waist. The touch trickles more cold down Min's back.

It's not that he doesn't know what Joon-young will do in front of hyung. It's that he doesn't know what Joon-young won't.

"If it does concern the investigation, it would be best to speak to me as well," Joon-young says, lingering close.

"It doesn't concern the investigation," hyung says.

"Uncle," Min says, breathing out. "If you wouldn't mind -- the dishes?"

Joon-young's eyes crease. "Lazy. Of course."

Hyung watches him go, mouth pressed shut, and when he starts for the door Min catches his sleeve. "He'll know if you close it," Min murmurs.

"You have no locks," hyung says. He stops advancing only when their bodies are just shy of touching. It's difficult not to sway into him.

"How could he hear me otherwise?"

"That's disturbing," hyung says, "and telling, and not what I wanted to say." His eyes roam Min's face, dropping down and up, from one eye to the other, and his tongue slides over his lips.

Min feels hot in his cold, damp shirt. "What did you want to say?"

"Just this," hyung says, voice low, low, low. Not a whisper, nothing to carry, but small and soft, a secret breath. He touches Min's arm, strokes his thumb against the inside of his elbow through his sleeve, and Min holds in a gasp. Hyung is touching him and _this_ is what he wanted to get. This. He wanted this as his reward, he realises. Hyung touching him again, hyung close. It's almost good enough to forget about Joon-young. "What were you thinking?"

His cheeks heat. "I wanted you to look at me." Both of them. He wanted both of them, but especially hyung. "I wanted to know if you meant it."

Hyung's smile is quirked and unfairly sexy. "Did you get your answer?"

"I think so," Min says, and it's a struggle, too, not to kiss him. "But you can tell me again."

"Later," hyung says. It sounds like a promise, enough of one to ease the loss when he lets go and puts his hand in his pocket. Min so badly wants it to be a promise. "For now I think you're correct. Your uncle wouldn't be pleased. The way you two interact is strikingly codependent."

"Have you forgiven me?" Min blurts. He made hyung cry. Min would like to say _that didn't happen, it was a mistake, nothing happened._ But how can he? Even when they were children hyung never cried.

Hyung shakes his head. "No. But I don't have to have forgiven you, so… isn't that fortunate?"

Min can already tell it's the best he'll get from hyung for now. It's not everything, but something. It's more than he had this morning. Perhaps tomorrow he can have the chance to earn more, and again the day after that, and again after that. As long as he can keep hyung. "Stay after he goes."

"Will he?"

"If I ask," Min says.

"Then you should ask." Hyung raises an eyebrow at Min's crotch.

It makes Min flush all the way to his ears and down his chest and he has to settle his cock in his trousers before he goes to the kitchen. There are other considerations than hyung's wants and his own, however hard it is to remember the fact.

Joon-young isn't there, or listening in the hallway like Min feared. He finds him in the bedroom looking through the drawers of sexual aids. Most of them he bought Min at one time or another so he could watch Min use them or experiment with using them. Most of them Min's never bothered to use alone.

"Uncle," Min says. Joon-young's back is to him, long and relaxed. He can't tell what Joon-young's thinking. "Are you choosing one for me?"

"Am I choosing," Joon-young repeats. "An interesting question. Are you?"

 _Fuck_ , something small and frightened whispers in Min's head. _Not now._ "I'm not sure what you mean."

Joon-young has his hand locked around Min's throat before Min can muster another word, and the squeeze of a glove, latex and filmy rubber, stops him entirely. He guides Min backwards, so careful, the press of Min's shoulders to the wall making no noise at all. It's a good position. They'd hear hyung coming up the stairs before he could see them.

"I wonder," Joon-young says, "if there are limits to what you allow him."

Min swallows. His grip isn't _tight_ , it's just -- unmoveable. Unbreakable. Joon-young has a grip borne out of doing manual labour for most of Min's life. "I wanted you to see, uncle."

"You don't think that would be suspicious?" Joon-young smiles. "Have I socialised you enough? I wonder. Then, shall we?"

He struggles not to close his eyes when Joon-young strips off one of the gloves and unzips his trousers and reaches in, pulling his cock out of his briefs. Joon-young wouldn't hurt him. He wouldn't want hyung to know. Min ruined his plans. That's all this is. But hyung is downstairs. Surely it can wait. It has to. "He's --"

"You should be quiet," Joon-young chides.

Min freezes, his lip firmly in his mouth, and Joon-young licks at the seam, tugging, biting the corner, until Min gasps and gives in before he bites through. Joon-young shifts Min out of the skylight's square of brightness, presses closer. Joon-young kisses him so, so rarely. He kisses skin and he kisses his cock rarely, but he doesn't kiss on the lips. "You're not drunk," Min mumbles.

"I don't need to be drunk for a special occasion," Joon-young says, Min's breath ragged in his chest, Joon-young's fingers rough and not stroking so much as pulling in firm, short tugs at the base of his cock. "Relax."

He sees a glimpse of the plug in his gloved hand before Joon-young reaches around, lifts his cheek and slides it inside, cold and very much a firmness, a weight like Joon-young knows exactly what Min wants. It drags a moan out of him and Min desperately stifles it with his wrist. He wonders how much of this hyung can hear. How quiet he has to be. How long hyung will tolerate waiting. Not long, if he knows hyung at all. "He'll see," he says, as quiet as he manage.

"Not if he stays downstairs." Joon-young strokes his cock again, a faint hum under his breath. He's smiling and still angry and Min balks, grabbing at his shirt, suspicion and realisation washing away all arousal but the feeling of his hand.

"He'll know," Min hisses. He doesn't want hyung to see him with Joon-young. He desperately doesn't want it. But that has to be the plan. The punishment. Isn't it? There's nothing else. Just this.

"He won't if you're quiet," Joon-young says, and he leans in, breath hot against Min's ear, his finger finding the loop of the plug and tugging in shallow little fucks that make him grunt. "Ah, ah. You should at least try."

Hyung is going to leave him. This is it, isn't it? This is all there is. Min could try to stop him again, but hyung will know. "I am. You're --"

"Shh. Try harder," Joon-young says mildly, pulling on the plug again, working it inside him.

Hyung's such a sickeningly _moral_ person, and he might know anyhow. Min shuts his eyes on familiar helplessness, lets it blanket his thoughts. What point is there? He thought he could have hyung back. Stupid. Stupid and foolish and _stupid._ It was stupid to think he could.

His tongue feels thick, Joon-young's hand so rough Min arches onto his tiptoes and pushes helplessly into it, into Joon-young's mouth on his. Joon-young kisses like a much harder man than he is, painfully focused. Min moans when he's kissed, always has. He gulps with the effort of keeping quiet, his weaker knee shaking by the time Joon-young slides his mouth away, his fist ringing Min's cock and surprising him into a loud, echoing whine. "Ah, well." It sounds pitying.

"What?" blurry with the tight, thrumming need to come before hyung sees him, before hyung overhears, the impossible hope sticking in his throat despite knowing, knowing, _knowing._

"Look," Joon-young says, nosing at Min's cheek, pushing gently. He doesn't want to look. He gasps in a breath and obeys.

It's better and worse than he thought. It's hyung's shadow at the bottom of the stairs.

He might have seen them. Glimpses of them. But now he is _listening,_ and Min doesn't know what he's heard, only knows the shape of his shadow, the stillness of it. Min fights tears, his hands shaking in Joon-young's shirt. "Uncle," thicker still. "Uncle." Surely it's done. Surely this is enough.

"You could have tried harder." Joon-young turns his head, making a loud surprised noise as though he weren't aware all this time that -- that -- "We'll be just a minute, Lee Hyun!"

Min doesn't know what humiliation feels like. He thinks it feels like this. Feels like gasping against the wall, his his cock hanging out and the print of Joon-young's teeth on his ear, shaking and so hard the brush of Joon-young's clothes makes his hips shift. Feels like knowing hyung will consider the explanations and dismiss them all but for the most obvious truth and hate Min for it. Feels like Joon-young taking his hand away, smoothing his shirt and so unfairly calm Min's teeth ache with hatred. Feels like the urge to ask him to touch him again, to throw away his pride and beg to come, if only Joon-young would explain to hyung that all this is something other than what it sounds like.

But Joon-young wouldn't, even if Min did beg. Min earned this. He brought it on himself. It could have been worse. Joon-young hates having his plans ruined, always has. Joon-young's going easy on him. It could have been so much worse. Usually knowing how special he is would make him feel better. It doesn't this time.

Min fumbles for his fly, stuffing his cock back in with ginger fingertips. His eyes ache. He doesn't want to go downstairs. He doesn't want to face him.

There's a chiming, splintering noise, the sound of curved fragments rattling to a tinny, uneven stop.

"Ah, that would be the stoneware," Joon-young says, stripping off the glove. "It wouldn't be good if he's hurt himself."

Min straightens and realises with a shudder that the plug is still inside him. "Uncle --"

"Let it stay for now," Joon-young says. "I also wonder how much you've told him. Perhaps we'll find out."

Min follows him, the shift of it inside him like a claim being laid with every step.

Hyung's broken one of the plates but he's also found the dustpan and started sweeping.

"Ah, a considerate guest. How unusual." Joon-young smiles, skirting him to the sink, and starts pulling on Min's dishwashing gloves, pink rubber monstrosities that should make him look laughable but never manage it.

"You're his lover." Hyung straightens, the full pan at his side. He sounds calm and even and spoiling for a fight. His eyes are so narrowed Min can barely see the pupils. "An interesting arrangement. I wasn't aware incest was legal here."

Joon-young smiles and turns on the water. "Of course not. However, it doesn't apply. I don't think I can be blamed for wanting a moment alone after that display at dinner. Was there something you needed, Lee Hyun?"

"If you needed privacy, he should have said so. As his guest, I will leave when he asks me to leave," hyung says, tilting his head toward Min. "Not before. Sun-ho?"

"A pity that you ought to leave now." Joon-young raises an eyebrow at Min, ostentatiously thoughtful. "Don't you think?" The question lingers in the way that means Joon-young doesn't intend it as one.

Min straightens, holding back a wince. He doesn't want to still be half-hard. He doesn't want it rubbing inside him for Joon-young to fuck him later. Things are so fragile with hyung already, and Min desperately didn't want to ever plan for this so he just … didn't. He hoped to avoid it entirely. Foolish. It was foolish of him. Joon-young's right. It was his fault. He made this happen.

He hopes hyung will forgive him someday. This and the other, someday. It's just … too late now. "Yes. I will call you later. Thank you for coming."

"Sun-ho," hyung says quietly. There's a weird little hope in his voice, like he would listen if Min told him he heard wrong. His eyes aren't on Min's face, but on his lips. They feel plush and wet, a little sticky, and Min really hasn't straightened his clothes enough. "Be sure."

He knows a tail of his shirtfront is rucked up and his belt is still loose, and he knows that Joon-young probably kissed him for this. So hyung could see him kissed, rumpled. He wonders if it's as obvious on his face as on hyung's, if it's a trait they share. He wonders who hyung is angriest with. "I'm sure."

Min swallows and steps closer to Joon-young and picks up a dishtowel for something to do with his hands.

Joon-young half-turns and strokes Min's cheek with two foamy gloved fingers. He looks _satisfied_ , like it was his own cock he had out, and hyung makes a choked-off noise. Min can't see his face. He's glad he can't. "Ah, of course. It is rude to do this in front of a guest. Good night, Lee Hyun. Drive safely."

Min bends his head and folds his arms and listens to the rattle of broken pieces, the bang of the bin lid shutting, the clatter of the plastic dustpan on his counter. Listens him leave. The dull thud of his rubber shoes, the door swinging shut. The roar of a car starting, diminishing.

He cleares his throat and breathes out, preparing to speak. But he can't, and he stares at the kitchen table instead, accepting the dishes handed him, drying them, stacking them. It's easier to put them away in stacks. The table is clean. Hyung took the time to wipe it down. It hurts, that fact. Min doesn't know why it should hurt.

When the sink gurgles, Joon-young humming and scrubbing, Min puts the stacks into his cupboards.

"Wasn't that interesting? Come here, my Min," Joon-young says and strips off the other dishwashing glove, Min's draining board polished to reflection.

He wishes it were hyung here. He wishes. But wishes never did amount to anything.

"You shouldn't be upset about little things," Joon-young says when Min doesn't respond.

"You knew I didn't want him to know," Min says. His throat feels very far. Like speaking into a can, or a hole. "Now I have to explain. You always said we shouldn't make questions that need answering. You said that."

"I also say we ought to finish what we begin," Joon-young says, smiling and still so, so satisfied.

Min kicks out at him, tries to hurl him over a chair, get him in the stomach -- rupture his spleen if it's the right angle, bruise his liver if he can just get the leverage, push him down --

"Ah, ah. You shouldn't be reacting like this." Joon-young catches hold of his hands, pushes him flat over the table, his legs between Min's and shoving them apart. Joon-young works his belt open, his hand back on his cock, and Min scoffs contempt even as he lifts his hips to help him.

"I hate you," Min whispers. His cheeks are hot and wet. "I hate you."

"It's not good for your health to get so worked up. Remember how long it took us to learn to control your temper? I saw how he looked at you. Your own hyung? It's not good to encourage such things. It won't help your reconciliation. That is what you want. Isn't that so?"

Min doesn't know if it is. It used to be all he wanted. It still hurts to think that he won't ever have it. But now it isn't. Now it isn't what he wants, and it's a shock like their mother's body, touching her blood and not quite understanding how there could be _so much_ everywhere. How much blood there was in a body. How it followed him around on his slippers, printing the way he came but never leading him ahead. His mother used to lead him by the hand. But there were no hands, then, only her blood beneath him on the floor.

It isn't what he wants. He wants hyung. Not to be Min for the sake of being Min as someone hyung betrayed and gave away. Now he wants to be what hyung will _have_. No less than that. Min doesn't know if he's capable of being such a person in the face of not having him at all, but he has to try. For hyung. Even if hyung doesn't want him.

He's startled out of his thoughts by the abrupt removal of the plug, Joon-young's gloved fingers an ungentle, searching replacement. "You should answer," Joon-young says.

"Of course it is," Min says. "I hate him. You know that."

Joon-young clicks his tongue. "Your overtures of friendship are confusing you. It is understandable. But so confused that you forget your goals? You should remember what you are like. A friendship is not a good thing to do to your hyung." He pushes in his cock then, holds him open with a thumb and works it in, steady and slow and nauseous and _too much too much._

Min can't argue with the truth. Not when it's Joon-young saying it, not when it feels like he can breathe with only a tenth of his lungs, the rest crushed upward by the slow, wedging pain of his cock. "I know."

"Be a good child now and don't disappoint me any further," Joon-young says into his ear, the buttons of his shirt hard against Min's back. He delicately winds his finger around Min's pinky, the tip of his thumb braced in Min's knuckle, the edge of his nail pinching and making Min's hand twitch. "Where are they?"

***

Ja-hee doesn't pick up the first three times Min calls her.

He tries again, and then again, and finally, finally, it connects.

"Who's this?" It's a young, high voice. Min places her as one of the twins. "It's not a good time, can you call back?" The twin makes a frightened noise. "Please, really, just -- call back." She hangs up, the clatter so loud he suspects she dropped it.

Min calls Eun-bok, talks over the greeting. At least it's the right voice this time. At least he answered quickly. "I told him she took the paintings."

Eun-bok inhales and hangs up.

Calling him is all he can do for now. It's all he can do. Retrieving his phone from his trousers was all he could do too, and he lies on the floor, too uncomfortable to rest but too sore to get up, his phone held to his chest in case Ja-hee is fine, in case it's nothing. In case hyung wants anything to do with him.

After a few minutes his legs don't immediately protest when he straightens them. He flexes his toes recklessly, gasping when the cramps hit his thighs.

Min cries as he rubs them out, weeping at the pain stuck deep where he can't get the angle to push in hard enough. There's no-one to see him, no-one to overhear, and he crawls to the fridge for water but discovers he's too weak to open the bottle. It's another crawl to the sink, another blurry, lightheaded lurch to get to his knees. He loses all of the first few palmfuls of tap water, so thirsty he licks at the drops as they run between his fingers.

He doesn't want to be responsible for what Joon-young does to Ja-hee. He doesn't want to be responsible for any of this, and he wants to protest, he wants to argue with someone, anyone, that it wasn't his fault. It just happened like this. He didn't do it. He didn't force her to care about it and how was he to know Joon-young would come tonight and how he was he to know that hyung would care.

That's where it falls apart. He did know. He knew.

Hyung's ringtone startles him enough that he loses the water, splashes it everywhere and drops running down the cabinet. It's not even the short phrase of the text alert, hyung is _calling him_  and Min desperately doesn't understand why. He crawls to retrieve it, stretching his arm out, and has to wipe his hand on his shirt before he can get enough purchase on the screen to answer.

"It was him," hyung says. It sounds flat, like he hasn't been sleeping. "Your uncle. He's been with you all this time. Lee Joon-ho is your nonexclusive."

"It's legal," he blurts out. Min frowns at himself. He sounds whiny and desperate. Unconvincing. He tries again. "I wanted it. I didn't mean for you to hear." Min tries not to sound like he's huddling. It doesn't quite work. His legs ache, his hips ache. He still can't bring himself to stand up. "I wanted it."

"You're a good liar. But not that good."

That hurts in a way Min didn't know could hurt more. "Is this goodbye?"

"What? No. It's --" Hyung's voice sharpens. "You sound terrible. Are you in any condition to explain it to me? What is your condition right now?"

He's not in a condition for anything. "I don't know," Min says. He lies down on his side, the phone under his cheek, close enough for him to hear hyung. Holding it up with three working fingers is too tiresome. "It depends on the answers you want."

"Sun-ho," hyung says, very soft. He's not sure anyone says his false name the way hyung says it. "Did he have sex with you after I left?"

Min can't help scoffing contempt. "I like it when he touches me. Wasn't that obvious?"

"I know what it sounds like when you want to be fucked. That was not what it sounded like." There's a strange noise, maybe half a chuckle. "No wonder you were so sure he didn't care if you were hurt."

"It's not that he doesn't," Min protests. "That is not what I said --"

"I heard him assault you to prove a point. Don't. Not tonight."

Min doesn't know what to say. "I didn't want you to know."

"He forced your hand," hyung says. "And mine. If he is your nonexclusive, then... then, I have a lot to think about. No wonder your answers were so strange. You told me it started when you were sixteen. Did it?"

"It was my idea," Min says. "I started it. He said I had to wait until I was legally able to consent and I did. I know you think he made a mistake. But he is not perfect."

Min knows that very well. Joon-young is better than him, and still not perfect. It only says how much worse a person Min is, how much he needs him. He's sure hyung would have been able to keep quiet. Hyung would have managed a simple thing like shutting up.

"It must have been hard," hyung says. "Keeping it separate. Dividing them up so I could have a plausible image of both."

Perhaps he should have rehearsed for this. But hyung sounds so brittle. Min aches to touch him, to bring him his favourite shiraz, to sit with him, to press against him. To give, if only hyung would accept it. If only Min could bring himself to offer. "I don't know what to say."

Hyung is quiet for four and a half minutes. Min watches the clock on the wall, watches the slow spin of the hands, and listens to him breathe. Listens to him rustle, listens to fabric and the sound of pouring liquid. Min envies him. He's not going to get off the floor any time soon. "At least tell me you've thought about what it might be like if he weren't there. Tell me you've pictured it. If you haven't, think about it now. Tell me what you would do for the first time."

Min blinks at the clock, bewildered. "There's nothing like that."

"Humour me. Please. For tonight, humour me."

"Was it that terrible?" Min's voice goes too high despite himself, and he reins himself in, tries again. "Was it so terrible to overhear --"

"You have _no fucking idea_."

Min flinches from his rage, his phone spinning away on the tiles. He scrabbles for it but doesn't hear anything more even when he presses it right against his ear. Only breathing. "Are you there?" he asks, careful of that awful, volcanically deep roar. An inane question. It's the best he can manage that isn't _do you hate me now?_

Hyung exhales. Min can hear him swallowing, the pour of more liquid. "Sorry. I didn't mean to shout at you. Think about it."

Min doesn't know what to say. Often when hyung asks him strange questions he's content to let Min talk until he reaches an answer, and Min gambles on hyung's patience once more. He can't think fast enough. Everything is slow. "I don't know what I can't do." He wonders what Joon-young doesn't like other than Min doing things without his permission. "There's nothing I can't do."

"Have you thought about selling your art? Properly. Exhibiting, not just bidding for commissions."

"I can't," Min says automatically. He can hear hyung's raised eyebrow over the phone, somehow; he knows, sure as he's ever been sure, that hyung is making his skeptical face. Knowing what face he's making distracts him from wondering what Joon-young's done to Ja-hee, what Eun-bok will find. "Artists who have talent sell a little, but it's not enough. They need to have talent, skill, and a sense of what people want. I don't have that."

"Do I need to ask where this argument comes from?" hyung says.

Min blows out a breath. "Me. It comes from me. I simply lack that sense. I always have."

"You're not unique, you realise," hyung says. "There will be people who see your paintings and feel particularly understood. It's simple statistics. Try again."

"Really?" Min mutters. "You're going to dismiss every reason I think of."

"Until you find one that actually matters, yes. Go on. Next."

He grumbles and turns over, wary of moving his toes. "I can't sell paintings," he says. "It would draw too much attention. My career is as an attorney. I need to focus on that."

"Anonymous exhibitions exist; false names exist; no-one is suggesting you replace your current career. Try again."

"You could at least sound like this takes more effort," Min says. It's so -- normal, this interchange of answer and holes punctured. It's so normal. It can't last. He's not sure how much longer he can stand waiting for the denouement.

"You know how this goes," hyung says, so much softer than usual. "Just … be yourself. Be Sun-ho." There's a garbled cough. "Tell me."

"I can't," Min says again. It sits heavy, weighs heavy even as he says it. "I'm greedy. I'm just greedy." Greedy enough to show off at the dinner table. No wonder Joon-young reacted so badly. Min disappointed him. "I want to be the best. But my focus is law, where I am the best. So it has to be like this."

"Do you want it to be?"

Years of hyung considering him across a table laden with food, across the span of crisp hotel linen, across the barest space of a breath with all their skin sticky-damp with sweat, across timezones down a phone line, and he's still not used to the way Hyun asks what he wants.

"I don't mind being an attorney," Min says. "Sometimes I like it. Why are you asking about my art?"

"You said you sold some," hyung says.

"I lied," Min says. It's hard to say. Even though it's hyung and not Joon-young's too-rushed cock inside him, not Joon-young leaning his bodyweight on a sprained finger, it's hard. "Someone had them for me."

"A good friend," hyung says.

Min wonders how much to say. He wonders if hyung would still think she was a good friend if he knew Min gave her up to Joon-young after only a little bit of fucking. "Do you want to know her name?"

Hyun makes a soft noise. "No. You say you are so busy. But you're not too busy for me."

He doesn't understand it as a question. Hyung says it like it has weight, but to Min it doesn't. It's either hyung or Joon-young. "How would I be? If I am not with him, I am available to you."

"I want to let that distract me, because I want to believe you mean it. Especially now. But --" Hyung tsks. "Can you listen to me? I mean, are you in a state to listen to me?"

"I can listen," Min says. Answering is a different thing. But he can listen. He always wants to listen to hyung.

Hyung clears his throat. "You lied to me when you said he was a non-exclusive. You pretended he and your uncle were different people. I want to let that go. I want to say, 'now this has happened, maybe he will be different', and let it go. I want to say you were hurt tonight and let it go. I can't. You're still lying to me. Aren't you?"

So blunt. It makes it easier to be blunt in kind. "Of course," Min says.

"I thought so." Hyun makes a grim noise. "At least tell me, is it something you keep because it would hurt you, like seeing you together tonight hurt you, or is it something you keep because it would hurt me?"

Min doesn't know how to answer with anything but the truth. He remembers hyung's face when they went downstairs. He thinks he'll always remember it. "Both. Today was both. This is also both. If you knew, you would get that soonest flight and be gone. You wouldn't stay."

"If I promised to hear you out?" hyung asks. "To listen objectively."

He shakes his head and remembers hyung can't see him. "I want to believe you." He falters. There's a divide, now. Perhaps it was always there and Min wanted to pretend it wasn't there. But there is a divide, there always has been, between what he wants of hyung and what hyung is capable of.

Even as he wants hyung to be everything to him, a second head, a second mind, a pulse against and inside and with him always, he knows hyung is a separate individual. He knows that because hyung isn't here.

And just the same, even as he wants to be everything to hyung, he knows he is not capable. That's why hyung isn't here. Min isn't capable.

"You would have a moral objection," Min says finally. "My uncle realises our relationship is not standard, but he keeps it because he likes it. This, even he would not keep. You have higher standards."

"A catastrophic moral objection," hyung says slowly. "That's what you're telling me this secret involves."

Min licks his dry lips, chews on a flake of skin at the corner of his mouth, jagged from Joon-young's teeth. "Yes."

"Fortunately," hyung says, "I am not unused to catastrophic moral objections. Mine, or others'. Let's table the moral discussion. We're not at our best. It's enough that you're finally being honest with me. Finally."

Min certainly isn't at his best either. He throbs and aches and wishes to curl tighter if only it wouldn't pull on his hamstrings. He wonders if hyung still looks like he did in the kitchen holding Min's dustpan. If talking to Min makes him look like that now. "It was circumstances. I didn't --"

"Instead of that," hyung interrupts, "tell me something else you would do for the first time if he weren't in the picture. Not about your art, we talked about that. Just something."

He knows what he wants to say, even if not wholly true. It feels craven. It feels like begging for scraps. "It's sentimental," Min says.

"Have I ever minded sentiment? Especially from you. Especially now." Hyung's quiet for a moment. "Tell me."

"I would take a photo with you." The closest he's allowed so far is their faces together in bathroom mirrors and reflections. "I would let you post it."

"I wondered about that," hyung says. Min listens to his sigh, drinking in the way his voice softens, intonations easing into something more like the talk they might have in bed. It's so pleasant that Min has to blink very fast for a moment lest he do something like beg hyung to come back. "You make it so hard to be angry. Are you buttering me up or are you sincere?"

"Both," he admits. It stings to be doubted but Min is quite sure he deserves it now. He deserves so much from hyung that hyung still hasn't given him. Yelling, a tantrum, demands, questions that aren't soft and gentle and sound like hyung cares about him. He doesn't know how hyung can possibly still care about him. Hyung isn't stupid. Everything Min laid for him back when he wanted to watch him break under the knowledge is still there, waiting to be put together.

It would take so little for hyung to ask him _is Lee Joon-ho Lee Joon-young?_ Just that and the rest would fall into place. He doesn't know why hyung hasn't.

"Sun-ho?"

He rolls over again. The floor is too cold and too hard and hurts his hips no matter which way he lies down. "What?"

"Surely there are other things."

"He's never forbidden me anything." Joon-young's never had to. Min knows intimately the weight and textures of Joon-young's disapproval. Joon-young is capable of perfect murders over and again; Joon-young is capable of taking him away from hyung forever. Taking hyung away from him forever. Joon-young is capable of asking him to make a choice like that and Min doesn't know what he would choose if asked.

It used to be _take hyung. Watch me kill him._ These days he doesn't know. Perhaps he could choose to be taken away forever instead and give himself up to Joon-young and his parade of albatrosses. A new identity, a new career in some other city. Abandon all of this. Perhaps hyung is better off the way things were before Min made himself interesting in that bar.

Deciding whether or not to make noise in a hallway is a pathetic little thing to care about in comparison. A pathetic little worry for a pathetic person who couldn't even manage it in the end.

"He helped me," Min says when hyung still doesn't speak. "I was a terrible child. But he looked after me. He taught me. I needed it. He protected me. It was always for my own good. Tonight was for my own good too." He grimaces at his own pleading. "Can you understand?"

He can hear the faint, ruminating noises of hyung selecting his words. He likes that little hum, likes being so close and trusted that he could learn it at all. Even now it feels like a privilege. "You should listen again."

Listening to hyung is the easiest thing in the world at the moment. He's not sure what else he can do. Get up? Tell him he doesn't want to be alone? Beg for it? Hyung would be right to laugh at him. Min would laugh. "I'm listening."

"Another time I will be a rational observer. Another time I will try to understand. Tonight I am not a rational observer. It was cruel. It was so cruel. You don't know what you sounded like. You don't know what you looked like when he dragged you downstairs. He was so smug, and you looked like -- I couldn't …"

Min doesn't want to ask. Joon-young didn't drag him anywhere. He doesn't what to know what hyung considers to be too much, what he calls cruel as though he has a right to say Joon-young is anything other than Joon-young. But it tumbles out of him anyhow, a string snapping and beads falling one after another, too fast to catch. "What did I look like?"

Hyung exhales. This, of all things, makes him waver in Min's ear. "Terrified. You were terrified. He made you afraid of me."

"I wasn't afraid." Min bites his lip on the lie. "I don't know all your moral stances and it seemed likely to encounter one, so --"

"You're not afraid of my opinions," hyung says, so gentle Min's helpless against the tone of it even as he wants to protest, to pull his knees to his chest despite the pain and fling the phone away. "You're afraid of my judgement. You're still afraid."

Min swallows his pride, then chokes on it, then gives up. Right there on his own kitchen floor, he gives up.

If Min can't face hyung right now, Joon-young would be worse. He would ask why Min hasn't stood up yet and Min would have to admit it's not that he can't but that he won't. Of course it is. Joon-young would make him face the fact that he hasn't tried, doesn't want to try in case the cramps come back, in case he can't after all. He knows his own cowardice intimately. He doesn't want to be told what he knows.

Maybe the way hyung speaks to him means if Min asked him to come, gave up everything, he would just… help.

He wipes his face. His hand shakes. "You said I could call you. If I needed you. If I trusted you."

Min can't rely on other people forever. It's a fool's gamble to think someone else will understand him and trying means Min is yet again refusing to fend for himself. Joon-young expects better of him. He is only hurting himself worse if things go badly and he should know this is what Joon-young is for. Joon-young would help him if it turned out he couldn't stand after all. Of course he would. This is what they are, this is why they are together. For situations like this. For understanding, not judgement.

Judgement. Min knows the judgement he earned. He deserved it. He disappointed Joon-young and it could have, should have, been so much worse. It still doesn't help. He's still cold and aching and alone and it doesn't _help._

"Yes," hyung says. He sounds as unsteady as whatever's left of Min's composure. "But you have to ask me."

"I'm asking," Min says. He wipes his face again. "Help me."


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cha Ji-an appears! I'm so happy to bring her in; she's a great character. The plot's rolling along -- I'd say five chapters at most before this is wrapped up. (Originally I had no plot at all. Now I have one and it's more or less taken over for the minute. Whoops! Next chapter will be more of a breather, unlikely as it sounds.) Fraught times ahead. Two lies don't make a truth, two truths don't make a lie. Three of either? That's harder.

Hyung puts him to bed freshly showered.

Min wasn't sure what to expect after he hung up. Perhaps hyung lied, and Min would fall asleep eventually and get up when his body clock told him to get up or when something hurt too much. Perhaps he would come late and get him into a chair and be too angry to stay longer, fulfilling the letter of the request and only that.

But hyung came fast, so fast he likely ran red lights, and stayed. He held the towels while Min showered, and stayed. He splinted Min's fingers, and stayed. He helped him rub the cramps out of his legs, and stayed. He fetched his phone and plugged it in at his bedside alongside his own, and stayed.

Min can hear him rattling around downstairs. It's comforting.

He reaches for his phone, sliding down the notifications. Seventy-eight percent battery from six percent and still nothing. His work number is overactive, the overnight clerks attaching it to file after file as part of his digital signature and overwhelming his inbox, but his personal is silent.

It's hard to remember they more or less finished the Chairman Kim files. The legwork part at least. He and Chun-seok. Just today. Yesterday, now. It's two in the morning and there's still nothing from Ja-hee or Eun-bok or Joon-young.

"Sun-ho?"

Min looks up, startled from keeping his screen awake with little movements of his thumb, and finds him holding two mugs. They smell like tea. Hyung is bringing him tea. It's like when he used to wake their father with freshly-made coffee, and Min puts the phone back down and reaches for a mug with both hands.

It's almost too warm to hold. Min likes the feeling, always has; for a sensory process heat signalling is remarkably uncomplicated. "I thought you were still angry with me."

"I am. But I have priorities, and I promised," hyung says. He's excessively slow about sitting down, reaching out to Min's mug to hold it level while he settles. "I'm glad you asked."

Min smiles into his mug. "You don't think it's pathetic?"

"Do you want my real answer or a comforting platitude?" hyung asks back, raising an eyebrow. His profile is weary, the skin under his eyes fragile. He's the loveliest thing Min's ever seen.

He always wants truth from hyung. Always. "The real answer."

"I want you to understand me, so I will be formal." Hyung turns his mug in his hands. "The criminals I study often orchestrate situations like yours. The pattern can indicate other criminal escalation patterns, so it is necessary for me to be familiar with the pathology. Don't interrupt me."

Min rolls his eyes and sits back, shutting his mouth. The comparison bothers him. How many of those others are capable of perfect murders, of Joon-young's brilliance? Hyung's talking about lesser creatures.

"I've interviewed subjects of this situation in the past for my research. For my books and for cases." Hyung's speech slows down even more, enough that if he weren't enunciating so precisely it would be one long drawl. "From that experience I think, I believe, asking for outside help in a situation like yours is not pathetic. Most of them never manage it in a dyad like yours. Especially with a dominating partner so open to harm."

The mug feels cold, his hands prickling. Hyung makes it sound like it was brave. Min doesn't find anything particularly brave about lying around waiting to be picked up, or brought tea, or being rubbed and towelled off. "It wasn't --"

"You asked what I thought," hyung says. His tone is as uncompromising as the face he turns to Min. "It was hard for you. I recognise and appreciate that. Don't deprecate my opinion because you don't want to accept it."

Min sits up and swallows a too-hot gulp of tea and finds it surprisingly lovely, an aftertaste like a memory of drawing with hyung on the floor while their father worked and the radiator hummed. "I didn't have anyone else to ask."

"Irrelevant. You asked me." Hyung still sounds so firm. "That matters to me."

"I suppose I can't dictate what you care about," Min mutters once he gives up on finding a way to argue. Hyung sounds so _certain,_ and Min doesn't -- he doesn't think so. But the way hyung says it draws Min like iron filings to magnets. He would like if the way hyung sees him were true.

"Thank you," hyung says. "Do you like the tea?"

Min sips only to find he's emptied it. He must have drank more than he realised. "Oh. What was it?"

"Keemun. I thought you might be a lapsang souchong person, but this was the closest I could find. It was at the back of the cupboard."

Joon-young doesn't like the taste of the smokier teas. Min never considered that before. He hesitates. "A cup of this tea is … it's one of those things. Without him."

"Ah. Do you want another?"

"Yes." Min watches him go, listens to him down the stairs. Hyung's steps are heavy through his slippers. He must have figured out how well sound carries. Joon-young, educational as usual.

He checks his phone again. Still nothing.

Min tastes more of the tea the second time around, weariness filtering into his eyes whenever he blinks, piling like a tower of stones until he has to pretend hyung isn't propping him up.

He doesn't want to sleep through the news, if any, and when hyung plucks the mug out of his hands he reaches for his phone. Nothing. It's been hours, and nothing. Joon-young's never been so slow to act as that. People who know him as Joon-ho think he's calm but he isn't. It's like the way his interest masks itself as sleepiness. Joon-young is not a calm person.

"What are you waiting for?" hyung asks.

Min forgot he was being watched, and he tries for lightness. "The one who took the paintings for me." He doesn't know what to call her. "He asked me where she was."

That gets him a slow, drawn breath. "What will happen to her?"

"He doesn't value her enough to kill her himself," Min says. Thinking it over makes him realise it's true. It's easier, now, to let go of the phone. To put it down and rub the marks where the edges dug into his hand. "You can't use that as admissible evidence, if you're wondering."

"Sometimes, the things you say…" Hyung rubs his hands over his face. "I understand. I understand because of my work, but I understand. Do you want me to stay?"

"I always want you to stay." He doesn't know how much to ask. How much is too much. "My work number is silent. It would be the personal number, if anything happened. If it does --" Min breaks off. He asked him for help. This should be easier too. It isn't.

Hyung puts his hand on Min's, his grip strong. "You're a heavy sleeper under much better circumstances than this. I know. I'll wake you up. Lie down."

Min lets hyung tuck him in. It feels familiar. It feels like being small and protected again, trusting hyung to always look after him. To take his hand and lead him, to take his hand and feed him, to take his hand and put him to bed. Min reaches for him, liking the new slide of their palms together. "Stay."

"I am." Hyung kisses the back of his hand and lies down facing him, his shoulder shading Min's face from the lamplight. He's still holding strong when Min falls asleep.

***

Min wakes up to cursing nearby and wonders how long he's been napping in the middle of shift downtime. But it's a mattress under him, not a concrete slab stinking of rosin and copper. He stirs, aching, and rolls onto his back to squint at the ceiling. It's his house, he has an office job, and by the angle of sunlight he's late for work, not school.

Context is piecemeal through the open door. Mostly cursing. He recognises hyung's voice, but not the other. Young and female and crass. "-- see him already!"

"No reason," hyung says, talking through a flicker of curses, "don't know --"

"Fuck _off,_ " the girl says, and that skywards inflection, sustained too long for decency or politeness, is Ja-hee's wealthy background played to the hilt.

"Let her in," Min says as loudly as he can manage, and coughs and gets out of bed. He's moving too slowly for comfort, limping too much, but his furniture is arranged for continuous handholds. In the hallway he can lean on the wall and squint.

"See, he knows me, see? This wouldn't have taken so long if you weren't such a prick!" It's one of the twins, harassed and wild-haired angry. There's no tears or sniffles, just a thrust-out chin. Min slowly lowers himself to the steps. He doesn't understand why he has to sit down all of a sudden. He knew Joon-young wouldn't.

"I thought children were more polite here," hyung says. He looks harassed too. "Why aren't you in school?"

"Not if they're hers," Min says, basking helplessly in the lack of grief on the twin's face. "How is she?"

"I thought you passed out!" The twin stomps past hyung up the stairs, thrusting a piece of paper into his face. "She's in hospital. That's the address. She said to tell you he broke her phone and she's really sorry. Do you want, like …" The twin shuffles. "I'm gonna visit after school."

Min can't help but notice a certain lack of answer. "How is she?" he asks again. "Who broke her phone?"

The twin shuffles more, the rubber tread of her non-uniform boots leaving black streaks on his perfectly polished stairs. "There was this guy. The cops said he was in prison before. He didn't like her when he was there or something? But she totally took him out. He got her and she made him fall on her and he was sick all over and then she killed him, bang! Splat!" She spreads her fingers, wide-eyed. "People are _really_ squishy. It was so cool."

No inside voice for this one either. And too much enthusiasm. Joon-young's good at dealing with teachers but he doesn't like it and Min doesn't want to push him now. "Don't say that on school grounds. What did he use?"

"A stick? But not like a hockey stick, just a stick. It went right through her. But not really pointy, just metal. Oh, right, I took a picture." She pulls out her phone.

"That might not be a good idea," hyung says.

"What crawled up your butt and died?" the twin snaps, twisting around so violently the ironed folds of her skirt flip up onto Min's knees.

"Control yourself," Min snaps, lost in the details she hands him. It's a good photo, well framed: Ja-hee, sprawled on the floor and only recognisable by the scar keloiding the inside of her sprawled arm. A man atop her, the back of his head flowered by a close-range exit wound. Through his body and presumably hers, a long piece of metal. Min recognises the chairs in the background, a colour like the man's blood drying on his blue jumpsuit. She was proud enough of putting them together herself to send multiple pictures captioned _behold!!_

The situation is not as bad as it could be, he surmises. The angle is wrong for it to have gone through her heart but the photo is clear enough about the fact that it should have. Thrusting weapons aren't suitable for multiple attacks; they're one blow and done. They take strength, precision, practice. Ja-hee must have surprised him.

Joon-young never introduced Min to the ones who worked for pay -- he said they would be terrible influences during his critical period of development -- but Min's heard names in the past and he knows of only one person with a strict preference for this method. "Did they say Jo Yong-woo?"

The twin brightens. "Yeah! Can I have my phone back?"

Min hands it over. "Tell her --" He glances at hyung and has to fix his eyes on the ceiling, blinking away the look on his face. "Tell her I'll see her after work."

"You're nowhere near well enough," hyung says, predictably. Min supposes he just hasn't really been around Min's pain tolerance before.

The twin stomps down the stairs, phone clutched in her upraised hand. "Oh, why don't you just fuck off?"

Min finds Joon-young's voice rolling out of his chest before he can think better of it, sweetly nonchalant. "There are worse things than rebar. You should know."

The twin halts on the bottom step and slowly turns around, hands held up flat. From the look on her face she knows exactly that voice means. Min doesn't know how much time she spent in Joon-young's care. Obviously it was enough. "I just got told to deliver, it's delivered, so, like, I'm gonna fuck off now. That's okay, right?"

"Don't touch him," Min says. "Do you need a note for school?"

"I got one. I got it." She skirts hyung, giving him such a wide berth her elbows scrape the walls, and leaves.

The look hyung gives her back is so pointy and skeptical that Min just _feels_ everything he feels for hyung and his pointy, skeptical face, so much he can't begin to catalogue it all. He smiles despite himself.

He's so late for work. But looking at hyung is worth it. It's always worth it. "If you think she's rude, her guardian's worse."

Hyung studies him as he ascends the stairs, hands in pockets. "How much worse?"

Min leans his shoulder against his when he sits down. "Once a rich asshole, always a rich asshole. All alike. Remember?"

"I remember. You didn't have to talk to her like that." Hyung clasps his hands loosely between his knees. "She was young and doing you a favour. And the crime scene sounded dramatic. It was a crime scene?"

"Of course it was dramatic. Jo Yong-woo's signature is a through hit to the sternum with a piece of sharpened rebar."

Hyung nods slowly. "I see what you mean. Are you sure about going to work?"

"Justice doesn't care about her," Min says. Would that he could say the same for himself. "Do you want to come with me?"

"To?"

Hyung's hand is such a solid, lovely piece of biological architecture. Min links his fingers with his and forces a smile. "To visit. You didn't want her name. But he doesn't like her and you want things I wouldn't with him."

"You did make connections without me," hyung says, inexplicably pleased. "Yes. I'd like to meet your friend."

"She's not --"

"You worry about her despite his preferences. That's enough for me. How about I drop you off and pick you up? You can call me when you're ready."

***

Eun-bok calls while Min is eating lunch at his desk, a laptop balanced on the edge while Min hunches away from the main keyboard, slurping noodles. Min wedges the phone between his ear and shoulder, shifting with a wince. His ankles still hurt. "Jung Sun-ho."

"Hyung. Is this a good time?" He sounds turbulent, a drag to his words.

"As good as any," Min says, feeling the first unwilling prick of concern. "So?"

"It was good you called when you did," Eun-bok says. "He was already there by then. Thank you, hyung."

"I"m visiting her tonight," Min says. He stares at the sloppy mass in the bottom of his bowl. He hadn't decided yet. He'd half-planned on calling hyung and telling him he changed his mind.

"I called him this morning. Hyung, you don't have to." His advice is so colourless, his voice flat.

Whatever Joon-young said to him isn't Min's business. "I'm visiting," he repeats, very sure of himself. Yes. He will visit her and hyung can meet her and disapprove of her manners.

"You should give it a few days. Let him settle. Listen -- hang on." Eun-bok's voice briefly becomes background amid a whirl of clicks and background conversation and vague shouting. "It's not a good time, hyung."

Min taps his chopsticks against the rim of his bowl. To say this is -- it's a battle line, it's resignation, it's a divide. Eun-bok will just have to cope with what Min already knows. "It's not a good time for me either. I don't care."

"Hyung," very quiet. "You should reconsider. The address in Young-dong is registered to Miss Sun. From back then."

"Is it," Min says. What interest can _Joon-young_ have in such a person other than their death? "Who is going?"

"Lee Hyun. If I can't stop him from running off without one of us."

Min considers. That would be a risk. "He does say things are best done by oneself."

Eun-bok makes a sharp noise and Min knows immediately that Eun-bok has considered exactly that.

"Don't be rash," Min says. "You don't have anything to worry about. And you don't know if she's alive. Find out and call me back." He hangs up, thumb stilling on his screen. Eun-bok will just have to soothe him for a little while without Min. It's a lot to ask of someone. Min knows that well enough.

The rub goes both ways: if Min exposes Joon-young, he exposes himself. If Joon-young exposes Min, he exposes himself. But he started it.

***

Hyung doesn't laugh when Min dithers in the hospital flower shop but Min can tell he wants to. "Do you know what sort of flowers she likes?"

"No," Min snaps. "My uncle visits people and I go with him. I don't bother with these things on my own. Either people recover or they don't." He frowns at a florid arrangement. "At least he has better taste than this."

Hyung is still carefully and obviously not laughing. "What does she like in general?"

Min doesn't know offhand, and he pauses, his hand around the neck of a bouquet. He'd crush it but then he'd have to pay for it. What does she like? Self-assembly furniture, crass things, smelly food. It's an argument that they're absolutely not friends, whatever hyung wants to think. "She likes cheap jokes and repetitive television," Min decides.

"She also likes you," hyung says.

Min follows him deeper into the aisles, the air close with fragrances barely dented by air conditioning. "What makes you think that?"

Hyung's smile is small and too knowing for Min's comfort. "You're loyal when people are loyal to you. Not before. How about these?" He holds up a colourful box of unflowered poppies.

"Why?" They're ugly if anything, tall green stalks and fat furled heads. "They won't open before she leaves."

"They take time to appreciate. They're beautiful when they flower. They can be processed into a drug or a poison. They require patience, but the patience is its own reward. And they are beautiful. Ah." Hyung smiles. "I said that already."

Min's ears heat. "We're in public."

"I'm complimenting the flowers," hyung says, suspiciously blithe.

"That's not all you're doing," Min snaps, his face hot, and he takes the damned poppies to the counter and tries to ignore hyung laughing behind him.

He forgets about being laughed at, forgets hyung entirely, when he sees Ja-hee.

Min's not unfamiliar with the ways bodies can break and puncture and deflate. He's not unfamiliar with the bag-of-liquid, frantically homeostatic biology of a human body. He's not unfamiliar with injuries, small and catastrophic, or with the way bodies resemble corpses and corpses resemble bodies. He's not unfamiliar with hospitals, antiseptic, ugly gowns.

This is not familiar.

Ja-hee is _small._ Her voice is small when she greets him and she doesn't jerk her arms around like she's never heard of decorum. She doesn't smile at him or make some rude comment. She looks small and frail and this is just someone in a bed. This isn't Ja-hee, this is some poor impostor. The face is right but it's not her. It's not her.

Min puts the flower box down on the portable table filled with a hospital tray of food and walks out of the ward, searching for -- he doesn't know. Something different. A way to turn back time and never -- never let her take the paintings, a way to have figured out something else, or never have moved them at all. Something different. Not this. Not that.

"Sun-ho," hyung calls.

Min walks faster. He can't. He can't do this.

Hyung catches up to him in the hospital carpark. "Sun-ho. Sun-ho, slow down."

"That isn't her." Min doesn't know how to express this ugliness, this sense that if only he'd done something different, it wouldn't be like this but it _is_.

"Is it the wrong person?"

"No. But it's not her."

"She's hurt," hyung says, and touches his arm, grips hard and draws him close. "It's because she's hurt."

An ugly noise works itself up from his belly in a flood of nausea, a yowl he has to put his hand over his mouth to stifle. "I don't like her. She's _rude_ and she can't type." Min doesn't have any other words. He can't explain.

Hyung's arms go around him, his hand on the back of Min's head pushing his face into the soft knit of his cardigan, and Min twists his hands into the thick cables at his sides and holds on, breathing in wool and the smell of hyung's cologne.

"She's going to be fine." Hyung's voice is unfairly calm. "Breathe and listen. I read the police report. That rebar did a lot of damage and she's going to look different while she heals. Conservation of energy. It's not your fault Jo Yong-woo had a grudge."

Min laughs, hyung's neck cold against his mouth. "He asked me and I told him."

Hyung's chest heaves, his breath hot and staccato, his arms tighter still. "It doesn't matter what you told him. His decisions are not your responsibility. Try to understand. Is there any possible thing you could have done that would not have led to someone being hurt?"

"I could have kept them," Min says immediately. "I could have told her not to do anything about it." Hyung could have found them and then he would have known while Joon-young watched. He would have known.

"Who would that have hurt?" hyung asks, very quiet. "Sun-ho. Who would have been hurt?"

His mouth works, trying to form -- Min doesn't know. Words. Tears? He's sick and tired of weeping. "It doesn't matter. It's like this now."

"It is," hyung says, "and it is not your responsibility. You did not do this. Your uncle did this. Jo Yong-woo did this. She did this when she didn't move fast enough or she was too distracted --"

" _How dare you_ ," boiling out of his throat. Min shoves him off, fury thin bile in his mouth.

Hyung grabs for his arms, pinning them to Min's sides. "Listen to me very carefully. Either she has some responsibility for failing to anticipate this, or she doesn't and neither do you. Do you understand me? It is _either_. Either it is both of you or it is neither. That is the logic. Which is it?"

Any possible answer sticks in his throat in the face of hyung's expression, serious and insistent and so, so sure. So sure Min isn't to blame. He looks away. "I don't want to go back in there."

"You don't have to." Hyung breathes deeply, eases his grip. "You don't have to. Do you want to try?"

Min manages to breathe. He manages to nod and let hyung lead him back inside by the wrist, through the hospital lobby, to the elevators, through the maze of the hallways. To the ward.

"She's healing," hyung says at the door. "Just… these things are difficult, but try to remember."

"Go in already," Min mumbles, and this time it's not any better, but he's more prepared for the weakness in her smile and the dullness of her eyes.

"That was pretty fast," she whispers. When she isn't being a battering ram the fragile wrinkles on her neck and elbows are obvious. Joon-young never bothered to to learn what to do with addicts. "Zoom. Must be really ugly."

Min sinks into the chair beside her, helplessly focused on her face. The more he looks, the more of her there is. It's not enough, but he can manage. He's good at managing with not enough. "I needed some sense talked into me."

"Yeah?" She moves her head a few degrees. "That guy? Sounds boyfriend. Looks boyfriend."

Min looks up at hyung. "He is." Hyung's surprised smile is gorgeous. "Lee Hyun, this is Sae Ja-hee. You met her when we interviewed Park Ji-woo. Ja-hee, this is Lee Hyun."

"Hi, criminology dude," Ja-hee says. "You're pretty. Nice pecs."

"You have the social graces of an infant," Min snaps, relief working down his spine. The chair is deeply uncomfortable and he can't bring himself to care. "An _infant._ "

She peers at hyung. "He say anything about me?"

"I was told your children share your social graces," hyung says, settling into the chair on Ja-hee's other side.

"Oh, _fuck_ you," Ja-hee protests, head swivelling on the pillow, hair an unsightly mess. "You're horrible. Nothing nice about your noona."

"He didn't have to say anything," hyung says. He's leaning forward with his listening face, watching her, sleeves pushed up to patched elbows. Min wonders what he sees. If he disapproves. "You love him too, right? That's good enough for me."

Min reddens, speechless. Hyung doesn't have to _say_ it like that.

Ja-hee grins through the wealth of tape and tubes and sick pallor. "What a charmer. Hye-jin said you were a pain." She coughs, wincing with a hand to her stomach. "Pain in the ass. Okay. You tell me. What's with the butt-ugly plant?"

"Well, it reminded me of him," hyung says, a smile around the corners of his mouth.

She groans through a rusty but very, very familiar laugh. "So what'd Hye-jin say?"

"Your daughter told me to fuck off out of his house," tilting his head to Min. "Quite a few times."

"Ah, yeah. Not my kid, not that lucky. But manners're mine. Sorry about that."

"Being honest with yourself is a positive trait," hyung says, humour so dry for a moment he thinks this is it, she'll take it as an insult, they won't like each other, they won't --

His fear settles when Ja-hee cackles again, stuttering with pain but recognisable. "Watch your tongue. Gonna cut yourself on that."

This creature in the bed isn't her, but it might be again eventually. She's not dead. Min didn't kill her.

***

Eun-bok's notification drags him out of dozing off against hyung's shoulder and he fumbles for his phone, uncaring of hyung reading the screen. _Soju?_

"Choi Eun-bok," hyung says. "I know that name."

"He works on the taskforce for your serial case. Bleached hair, eyebrows, keyboard. He's like Ja-hee. To me."

It buzzes again. _Tomorrow? Reply asap_

"If he is like her to you," hyung says, "perhaps you should meet him. See what he has to say."

Min lifts his eyes to meet his. "Why are you so invested?"

"I like knowing you aren't alone when I'm not here. I worry. You care for me, but it's not reasonable to live for one person."

"I suppose he doesn't count," Min says, not expecting an answer.

Hyun surprises him. "I would say he does. But it is another case where it is not reasonable to have only one person, no matter who they are. If they think it is reasonable, that person is not thinking of your interests. Your uncle thinks it is reasonable. Therefore."

Min deflects for lack of anything pleasant to say. "You're so diplomatic with me now."

"I want to tell you the truth in a way you'll hear it," hyung says. "If that means I have to be diplomatic, so be it. I'd rather think about what I say than risk more false impressions. For both of us."

Soju means she's alive. Soju means they're sending someone out to talk to her. Soju means Eun-bok's done all he can within the limits of his position.

Min sighs, remembering the way he sounded, and texts back. The timing will be critical. _Same place at 7._

_Ok thanks_

"I don't suppose you want to fuck me," Min says a while later. Hyung's English movies put him to sleep and having so much of hyung near him makes a languorous attention start under his skin, noticing the brush of little places, the way their bodies are folded together. They haven't had sex since hyung made him come with his mouth.

Hyung kisses the top of his head. "How about we go to bed, take it slow and see what happens?"

"Are you stalling?" Min doesn't like the idea of hyung having to put him off. He's the one who puts so much value on _honesty._

"It's not stalling. It's 'I need to know you're all right'." He sounds weary. "I want to take it slow. For me."

Min didn't know. The depth of how much Hyun seems to mean it when he says things like _you're beautiful_ or _I love him too_ still startles him. "I might fall asleep."

"Then we stop and you sleep," hyung says, and turns off the television. "Does that work for you?"

"Diplomacy," Min grumbles.

Hyung kisses his temple, mouth sliding to his ear. "Consideration. I'm being considerate."

He keeps being considerate all through leading Min to bed and undressing him, a concentrated line between his eyebrows while he unbuttons Min's shirt, a careful hand between his underwear and waistband while he takes off Min's belt. Min's hiss make him pause. "How tender are you?"

"Not too much," Min says, and takes his face in hand to kiss him. Joon-young's kisses are good but hyung kisses like _hyung,_ thorough and maddeningly slow, his grip on Min's thighs lifting him to the tips of his toes.

"Lights off," hyung murmurs. "Okay?"

"Yes." Min scrabbles at his shirt, gets his hands underneath to feel him, his stomach warm and tense, trembling just a little to hold Min up. "Yes."

Hyung gets a grip on them in bed, lube sliding messily on Min's belly, their cocks barely fitting together in his hand. His knuckles rub sore, mouthwatering lines of hypersensitivity into Min's skin and Min clamps his mouth shut, his lips between his teeth. It's easier this time, just these pitched sounds through his nose that aren't anything, wouldn't carry far at all if he'd just thought of it --

"Sun-ho. Sun-ho." Hyung lifts up, his wet hand slippery on Min's cheek, and the loss of his cock against his is a traitorous relief even as his back arches to follow him upwards. "What's wrong?"

"I was trying to be quiet," Min says mulishly. "I can be quiet."

Hyung kisses him, too chaste to keep Min's cock interested. "I like hearing you want it." He shifts his knees either side of Min's hips with a groan. "Remember how many earbuds I broke trying to listen to you when your video stuck?"

Min makes an involuntary face at the reminder. In his opinion phones should either be on or silent. It was a working philosophy until his video app updated. Being muted for a spam notification in the middle of convincing hyung to finger himself on camera was the last straw. "I didn't know that setting _mattered._ "

"You're missing the point," hyung says. "I wouldn't have gone through so many if I didn't want to hear you. What is this really about?"

"You didn't like how I sounded." There's a fissure of hurt in his chest. He did think hyung liked it. He was sure of it before Joon-young -- Joon-young. "You said it was terrible."

"Because he was hurting you. Not because --" He sighs. "I need the light on for this."

Hyung in yellow lamplight is handsome and warm and so intent Min quails and pulls up the blankets from their kicked-off mess at the foot of the bed. "We could talk about it later."

"We really couldn't." Hyung's smiling, just a little. "It's another matter of trust, isn't it?"

Min blinks warily, pulling the pillow closer. Hyung's mind is an arcane place sometimes. "How would it be?"

"Do you trust me to know the difference between when you want it and when you don't?"

His first instinctive response is _what difference?_ and he stares at him, stuck. Sometimes hyung's questions are like a hook through his lip, dragging him into open, foreign air. "You pay attention," Min says carefully. It's a safe thing to say. Hyung pays attention to everything. If there's nothing else to read he gets absorbed in nutrition labels.

"I do," hyung confirms. "As much as I can. There is a difference. It's the classic apples and oranges. They are both fruit. They are both patterns of sounds. But that's as far as it goes. I pay attention," he says again, "and if you sounded anything like that, I would stop."

It's strange to go from being hurt that he didn't like it to the prospect of being hurt if he _did_ but it feels a better question, like the answer would settle more of his unease. "You're saying it wasn't sexy. Not even a little?"

"Not even a little. I wanted to run up the stairs and push him down them," hyung says. "I was that angry."

Min laughs, startled and flattered all the same. "It was just --"

"Don't tell me what it was just," hyung says. "Please."

He's not sure what to say to that. If there is anything. In the quiet hyung gets under the covers too, a little distance apart.

"I believe you believe it," Min says finally, watching his face. "I won't try to be quiet." He glances around. "I suppose I don't need to be concerned for the neighbours."

"You really don't," hyung says. This close his irises are startlingly lovely in and of themselves, not quite black, firmly coloured as hyung is firmly sure of himself. Min's used to thinking of his features as a comprehensive collection -- these moles, these cheekbones, these lips, coherent in their attractiveness. Not as one part after another, each gorgeous in their own turn. "Something on my face?"

"She's right," Min tells him. "You are pretty."

Hyung's face crinkles in a smile, lopsided on the pillow. "Kiss me, then."

He does. This time when hyung opens his mouth, teeth a gentle scrape over his bottom lip, Min doesn't hold back how good it feels.

"I want to hear you," hyung murmurs, hand teasing the lingering lube on Min's cock, spreading it in a dripping, unholy mess over his stomach. It feels like if they'd kept going, if they'd come together like that, and Min sucks in a breath as he starts to harden again. "I want to hear every word. Every sound. Everything." Each syllable feels like a kiss, hyung's lips shaping soft and deliberate against his. "Tell me what you want, Sun-ho. Tell me."

"You know what I want," Min answers. It's the only answer he has. It's every answer in him, from the clutch of his fingers to the stretch of his spine to the brush of their knees. It's every answer from the thigh he throws over hyung's legs and the hands he runs up hyung's chest, leaning into his grip, straddling him just to force his cock down and rub his whole body against him, the pain when he overextends his hips and relights the throb in his thighs sweetening the pleasure of the rest.

Min likes this view, always has. Hyung under him. It looks good, light skimming his heavy shoulders, their faces so close hyung can't successfully lie to him. "Is it me?" hyung asks. He rubs his thumbs over Min's ribs. "If it is, you have me."

"It is," Min says truthfully, and sits back, shifting for a better angle and leaning on hyung's chest for balance. Joon-young always made sex itself look easy, a bit of literature and a few materials and done, but Min isn't nearly as confident and hyung isn't giving him any guidance this time.

It's like he wants Min to take control but they haven't done that since that time Min had to stop. Not since then. He's talked about it in the middle of phone sex and hyung sounded receptive enough to the idea, but Min isn't sure. This might be another test. "What do you want?"

Hyung runs his eyes over him and his face goes complicated. "I want the light off before I lose my erection again." The hurt of it is corrosive, hyung's skin breaking under his nails and earning a yelp he can't bring himself to care about. His hands clamp on Min's wrists. "It's not you."

Min knows better than to try to shake him off but it doesn't stop the thinness of his voice. "Let go."

"It's not you," hyung says again. "Look at your stomach. Look at it."

"How is that not me?"

"You've forgotten," hyung says. He sounds puzzled. "Or have you just not seen? _Look down."_

Min looks down and finds a wide stripe of bruises from hip to hip across his belly, layered black. This morning when he dressed they were swollen red but they looked nothing like this, solidly coloured by impact. His kitchen table is hardwood and not forgiving. Neither is Joon-young. "It doesn't hurt that much."

"It's fine if you believe that. But it doesn't make me want to fuck you." Hyung hovers his fingertips on the solitary bruise high on his stomach. Min supposes it's from where his ankles slipped the first time, before he got a proper grip on the far edge and strained his fingers instead. "It _really_ doesn't make me want to fuck you. It makes me think."

Hyung's eyes are unnaturally bright when he looks up at Min, his touch too gentle.

"I should have left. As soon as he invited himself, I should have left. No wonder you didn't want him to see us. No wonder you were so uncomfortable at dinner. Did you know he would?"

"It wasn't just because you were there," Min mutters.

"I know." Hyung sits up on his elbow. "I'm not going to manage it tonight. You might as well get warm."

He gets up, regretting the waste of the perfect angle, and stretches out beside him. "I wanted to fuck," Min says. It sounds like whining. He is whining.

"I would too, but I think it's better to talk." Hyung pulls up the blankets. At least he's smiling again, if briefly. "Now that we are talking. I blame myself," he says, shockingly frank. "I should have left and I didn't, and what he did in the hall was because of me. It was because of me."

"I just told you it wasn't anything to do with you."

"Some of it. Not all of it. Are you very certain he doesn't know me?"

Min avoids tensing against him, but it's a close thing. "What do you mean?"

"The dinner. The conversation. It felt he had expectations. Like feeding me half a line to hear the rest. It wasn't just the way you looked when you came down. It was the way he looked too. Like what he did to you was also half a line." Hyung sounds distressed all of a sudden and Min looks over to find him biting his lip, jaw tense. "I thought I was aware of my own failings. But there are things I don't remember."

The idea of hyung letting Joon-young dictate his character is laughable. "All you did was break a plate."

"Yes." Hyung meets his eyes, somber. "I didn't defend you. I just listened. I left. And now." He gestures to Min's torso.

"What else should I have expected of you?" Min's had enough. "Should I have expected you to answer for a murder charge? Should I have expected you to stay and fuck me too?"

"I think he did," hyung says. He sits up, pale and dragging the blankets. "I think he did. He was testing my character. He wanted to know what I would do." Hyung runs his hand over his face, thumb and fingers masklike on his mouth. "Nothing. I did nothing."

"There was nothing you could have done that wouldn't have led to your arrest," Min says.

Hyung drops his hand. "My arrest?"

"Of course. You assume I would support you. You're wrong."

"Sun-ho," very quiet.

Min feels inexplicable tears prickle. "These still aren't healed," gesturing to his throat. "For all you know I would have said you did this to me. Don't tell me you expected otherwise. You saw her. You keep saying you know about these things."

"I didn't consider it before but you just made it very clear. You assume he wouldn't have hurt me. Why is that?"

He makes to answer, then pauses. He's never before thought Joon-young might not want hyung alive. It's _hyung._

"You didn't know," hyung says, quiet and horribly focused. "You did assume. Why?"

"I'm thinking," Min says.

If hyung knows everything, and chooses Min nevertheless -- exclusively, solely Min -- Joon-young won't like it. Min knows that much. Joon-young's never tolerated disagreement. He doesn't tolerate interruptions either. All of this is an interruption to Joon-young's plans but hyung is the wildcard both of them want. Is there a chance he will want Joon-young in return once he knows him, in the same way he won't want Min if he knows him?

At the same time it seems possible he might know everything and choose Min anyway. It's a faint, distant possibility. But Min warned him. He told him he wouldn't like it. Catastrophical moral objection was hyung's own phrase. Would Joon-young tolerate that for hyung's life?

The more he thinks about it the more he realises he doesn't know what Joon-young would have done if hyung came up the stairs.

It was too close. He understands now. It was too close because Min is weak. He's weak, and weaker still where hyung is concerned. Weak to his opinion, whatever hyung thinks. Weak to his judgement, his discoveries, his everything, the chances where he's involved. Min can't survive losing him twice. To himself, or to Joon-young.

That truth is a calm. It's the calm of four in the morning in the law library, or hyung's arm against his cheek, or seeing the twin's face and knowing Eun-bok was in time.

It makes concession easy. "You're right. I did assume. I think I just … find it hard to believe."

Hyung's studying him. He doesn't speak for a long time. "What decision did you just make?"

"I can't picture you dead under these circumstances." Min hopes his face didn't give anything away. "I think that's why."

"The why of your decision?" eyebrows carefully raised.

It's too close too the mark. Much too close. Min smiles brightly. "How about tomorrow? I don't want you to die of blue balls."

Hyung almost doesn't let him get away with the distraction. Almost. Min waits, watching him weigh it, and carefully doesn't sigh relief when hyung's arm goes around him. "That's a myth."

***

Hyung wakes him up for work with morning sex so thorough it left him limp in a pile of towels and Min leaning on the lift wall the entire trip down. The pleasant daze of hyung's full attention lingering on his skin is a heady thing that makes his commute invisible and lasts through Attorney Kang piling him with half the department's overdue paperwork.

Chun-seok leans on the divider between their cubicles, eyes bulging. "Jesus, who died? What did they do to make you hate them so much?"

"No-one," Min says. Logging in feels like playing hopscotch with hyung when he was very small, a dance of chalk and dust and the smell of coffee. It's early enough that there's no-one to see him smile like Chun-seok's a friend. Ah, yes. "Did you want coffee?"

"You're the creepiest asshole in the _world_ ," Chun-seok says. "Don't forget sugar this time."

Min feels generous enough to bring back an extra sugar packet. Chun-seok crosses himself and hides under his jacket, muttering.

Getting in this early gives him the advantage of updating the intranet before everyone else slows it down trying to log in, and he has all of his casework updated by eight, a general idea of their defense structures by ten, and most of the relevant legal articles cited by lunchtime.

"Go somewhere," Chun-seok hisses, his jacket over his arm and his hand grimly fisted in Min's lapel. "Fuck off. Jesus. Go for a walk. Get out of here, you're scaring the clerks."

Min feels not quite invulnerable, but bulletproof. Hyung wants him and Min can do something to keep him. Min knew it could feel like that. But knowing the power exists and having it are different things.

He's so lost in contemplating the cleverness of hyung's tongue that arriving at Joon-young's workroom is startling. Bulletproof enough for this is a gamble. Min takes it, liking the clarity of his choices now that he's made up his mind.

Joon-young's working at the table, a finger to his lips, and through the open door to his office Min can see the tangle of a skinny woman's limbs, so collapsed in Joon-young guest chair a stiff breeze would knock her to the floor.

"Who is that?" Min asks, coming to stand by the table and observe.

Joon-young points to the corpse and then to the office with a raised eyebrow. Min tilts his head to the tangled woman.

"That's Officer Cha Ji-an. That guard's daughter, if you remember. She naps." Joon-young smiles. "You're in a good mood."

He doesn't bother to hide the satisfied hum when he answers. "I am. Why does she nap in your office?"

"I'm good company," Joon-young says blandly.

Min smiles back and the lie of it doesn't hurt. He thought it might. Perhaps it's the good mood, the good sex, having hyung back. It could also be that Joon-young is still a worn book, a half-finished jigsaw puzzle, a full plate at dinner, there in his face and the unshakeable poise of his feet. Still all the things Min needs.

Min watches her head inch down the side of the chair's open back, amused despite himself. "She's going to fall off."

Joon-young nods, drawing bile from the body's gallbladder. "She might." He places it in a vial, replaces the chest plate and makes a loose stitch in the corners of the main incision to hold the skin together, covering the body with a sheet.

He'd never bother with that for Min. Perhaps because he's special. Perhaps because this detective woman is squeamish. Perhaps both.

"Shall we have tea?" Joon-young takes off his gloves and mask.

"Is it wise to make introductions, uncle?" Min studies him, wondering if this is part of the plan he disrupted. Joon-young is the sort of person who makes too many plans at a time then complains when the discarded pieces move.

"Why not? She also has an interest in your hyung."

Min pours the remaining half-inch of tea on the plants and starts a new batch while Joon-young washes his hands, pouring three cups and sitting in the other chair with his own. Her head truly is going to crack onto the floor any moment now. Would it be enough force to be concussive?

Joon-young comes in and smiles at Min, his hand balanced under her head, his other hand in his pocket.

Min's halfway through a cup of truly insipid tea before she drops into his hand and jerks upright, wiping her mouth. "I fell asleep again. Ah. Ah, hello," bowing to Sun-ho with her hands in her tangled hair. "Did I sleep through your break?"

"No, no." Lee Joon-ho in front of another person is a charming, old-fashioned man.

Min watches from behind his cup as Joon-young offers her a cup, solicits her assurances with a cushion, and continues to -- charm. Deliberately. He hasn't bothered to sweeten someone in years and it explains a lot about his sex drive lately, answers a question Min didn't realise he had. Joon-young loathes being charming and the aggression always ends up somewhere else, usually inside Min.

"It looked a bad dream. You work too hard, Detective Cha."

"It's this serial case," she sighs. "The only clue we have is in Young-dong. The locals say she can't travel, so I have to get a car but I'm too busy. It was about my dad anyhow. Who's this?"

"Ah, I've been rude. This is Attorney Jung. Attorney Jung, Detective Cha. It was his house next to the last one, you know."

"Oh, you're the one who took the kids." She yawns inelegantly. "They interviewed you, right?"

"Yes. Detective Choi and Detective … Son? They interviewed me at the scene. Are you also on the taskforce?"

She rubs the small of her back. "For all the good it does! Seriously, why does it have to be so far away? I'm so tired."

"Unfortunately I can't find any other leads for you. I went through the materials again, but no luck." Joon-young claps his hand against his knee, leaning forward in idea. "Have you considered asking that jerk to drive?"

"He wants a fee for the time. What about my time? He said he was sleeping. Sleeping!" She drinks her cup all at once and shakes her hair out of her face, pulling strands away from her mouth. "Ah, thank you. Nice to meet you, Attorney Jung." She's amusingly obvious in her dislike. Probably she would dislike him a thousand times more if she knew how much fucking they've done on that very chair.

"Your father?" Min asks. What sorts of dreams does someone have about a brutal prison guard? If circumstances were different, would Joon-young have taken her from that man too?

"He died a long time ago but I think about him a lot. Anyway, I don't want to get into it." She jerks a thumb at Joon-young. "This guy knows."

"Certainly," Min says, unable to resist.

Joon-young's eyes widen pointedly. "Detective Cha is good company," he says.

Min sips tea. "Of course. I'm interrupting your meeting. I can take a phone call?" gesturing to the workroom and its body.

"No, it's all right." She touches her fingertips together on her cup and sits forward, peering at Min's pin. "Criminal defense, huh?" Her distaste is even more pronounced. "I guess it's a career."

"I'm not your enemy, Detective Cha." It's not a new attitude. It was old the first time an officer shouted in his face. Back then he was an intern in third year and he refused to let them interview a suspect in the hall away from cameras and cassette tape.

"I just don't like lawyers. How do you know him?" she asks Joon-young.

"Everyone has a favourite something. Favourite dentist, favourite doctor. Favourite attorney. We see each other often."

Min supposes he can concede for now. "Favourite pathologist."

Joon-young smiles at him. "Indeed."

"Wow, you really do know each other. I see now. But I am late and my team will call," holding up her phone, "so I will see you later." She kicks her feet and gets up, turning a bright smile on Joon-young. "It's really comfortable in here. The tea's nice too, thank you."

Min waits for the outer door to bang shut before he speaks. "You don't like hypocrites."

"She is that guard's daughter. Hypocrisy is to be expected." Joon-young sits back. "An interesting group, isn't it? Detective Choi, Detective Cha. Attorney Jung," gesturing to Min with his cup. "Lee Hyun. I think it is a good team."

"What do you want from this?" He doesn't expect a serious answer but Joon-young forgives rhetorical questions once in a great while. "All of this."

Joon-young's face goes the familiar blankness of thought, brows drawing together faintly. "Ah. You don't understand yet." He nods, smiling assurance. "You will."

Min wishes he felt reassured. "I'm not part of the taskforce and you haven't given me anyone to defend. Are you losing your touch?"

"I wonder," Joon-young says mildly, leaning back with his tea, no doubt lukewarm. "Detective Choi does seem to be under some pressure these days."

"Is he?" Min says. Joon-young is not a calm person, but neither is Min. The only thing stopping him from shouting is the slow, awful sinking as though he has dropped through the chair to sit on the floor, his mind abandoned in the vicinity of his skull to mouth meaningless words. "I haven't spoken to him lately."

Joon-young's eyes crinkle. "Perhaps you should."

"He hasn't contacted me recently. What would be the point of speaking to him?"

Joon-young smiles. "I am helping. You should learn to accept help."

Min grinds his fingernails into his wool trousers and it is only his phone creaking that stops him from making a fist and ruining the crease. "Should I," Min says. He lifts his chin. "And if I also help without asking first?"

"Who could you help?" gently, firmly, as Joon-young always is.

Min feels his phone vibrate, a text from a number he doesn't recognise. _This is an automated notification. All tests clear. No follow up. Call for for more information. Do not reply to this message._

"I defend my clients," he says. "That is my function. If he is to be a client in the future, I should prepare my defense in advance. Shouldn't I?"

Each step is an ache. His belt presses on bruises every time he sits down and the muscles in his thighs protest whenever he stands and hyung might be speaking to him again, having sex with him again, but it's all with the careful guard of an old wound.

Min did that to him and Joon-young did that to him and Min is getting so little sleep these days that every morning is an exhaustion.

"It may not be necessary today," Joon-young says, folding his arms. "That kid is being slow."

Min watches him, thinking of Eun-bok's unease. Miss Sun's shiny spots of nail polish catching the light when she left for work, flashing holes like embroidered mirrors.

Joon-young left him on the floor. Min isn't used to something he can't comprehend, but however much he thinks about it, nurses the way it _felt_ to watch him walk away like a sore tooth, he doesn't understand how it was for his own good. He doesn't know how to explain it away. It should make sense, but it doesn't. Whether that's a fault in Min or Joon-young, the fact remains that it doesn't make sense.

A plan worth such carelessness is likely one of his fantasies, one of those … ideas of how the world should be, like stealing albatrosses and creating justice and crushing his own chilli seeds. Those ideas are worth so much to Joon-young. The albatrosses are worth careers and sixteen-hour shifts and hours fixing the light circuit with a textbook at his feet. Justice is worth the frenetic shift of his shoulders when he comes home after a hit, wide-eyed with smiling exhilarated success. The chilli seeds explain themselves.

That this particular plan was worth leaving Min on the floor is Joon-young's assumption like the certainty that he wouldn't take it out on hyung was Min's assumption. If one risks being wrong so does the other. If it was wrong of him to leave him on the floor, if it was, then perhaps there were other mistakes. Other things he shouldn't have done.

Maybe considering this at all means he's a disappointment, that he'll never be enough to meet Joon-young's standards the way he used to think he could, and it pangs and it stings and it hurts, it's a terrible knot in his gut to disappoint again and again and _again,_ but it still doesn't _stir_ anything in him. It doesn't make him want to text him, it doesn't make him want to arrange dinner or invite him over. It doesn't make him want to turn the lock and press against him.

Joon-young took everything he wanted from Min and walked away with it and left him there. That's how he treats _them_ , letting them slide down naked and walking away while they nurse their bruises. Other people. Lesser people. People who aren't special, who don't understand. People who aren't even relevant, just a bundle of nuisances and dubious assets.

Not Min. Min is special. Min is someone Joon-young puts to bed. He cleans him up. He put a blanket on him. He doesn't walk away. He touches Min's hair and tells him something soothing. He looks after him. He takes care of him and makes sure he sleeps. It should have been him splinting Min's fingers. It should have been him putting Min to bed.

He wants to think it was a mistake. He wants to think Joon-young had other things on his mind once Min gave him what he wanted, once he was satisfied Min understood. He wants to think Joon-young was preoccupied with plans and distractions and thinking ahead, too busy to remember Min was there. He wants to think it was an accident.

He can't. He knows him too well. Min is, even now, special. It's always been true. He is special.

Min shifts, takes out his phone with deliberately slow motions, and scrolls to his texts. Eun-bok's _Ok thanks_ is still sitting there. It's three hours' drive to Young-dong and the last he heard from Eun-bok was last night and Detective Cha talked as if there were no official arrangements. More than enough time for a sleepless roundtrip if Eun-bok decided the drastic course of action was the correct one. _Where are you?_

Joon-young either didn't hear the waver in his voice or Eun-bok didn't show him, but Min heard it and he won't pretend for Joon-young's sake that he didn't. _? at work_

He might not be able to reply to the testing clinic but he can answer for his debt, and he smiles back at Joon-young and gets to his feet. Like Ja-hee to him, was it? Fine. "Defense is always necessary, uncle."

***

The problem of the car is easily solved by directly contacting Detective Cha and offering the use one of the surplus legal vehicles. The problem of hyung's reluctance less so.

"I agree there should be an interview," hyung says. "But who told you it was Sun Mi-young? Why me?"

"Detective Choi showed me a picture. She was kind to us for a while."

"It has occurred to me that this series of murders is connected to Lee Joon-young." Hyun sounds like he's dissecting a case. "It has. It is implied that he is involved. But it is like my suspicions about your -- uncle. I have no proof. Neither do you."

"How do you mean?"

"She's never lived in Busan."

Min pauses, the rim of his mug wafting ticklish steam up his nose. He thinks very carefully about favours. "I don't mean we as in Min, your brother, and I. I mean we as in Detective Choi and I."

"He's listed as an orphan," hyung says, his tone _convince me._

Min doesn't know how. He keeps trying. "Because he is an orphan. It was a temporary situation. I will … if you do this, I will tell you when you return. I will tell you about the situation."

"Freely. You would freely tell me about your past."

Min adds sugar to Chun-seok's travel mug. "Some of it. Not the moral objection, but yes. You may need to override Detective Choi. He is also a private person."

Hyung sounds sad. "I hope whoever you're protecting appreciates it, Sun-ho."

 _That kid is being slow._ And: _7_. He checks his phone. Quarter part three. "It would be best to leave now."

"I understand a little. I hope you will tell me more when I get back. I don't know if you can promise, but it would be good. It would matter to me."

"I promise." Min shivers against it and finds he isn't lying. It's easier to say the second time. "I'm promising you. You should go."

"I'll call you when I get there. Whatever happens. Thank you for trusting me," hyung says, and hangs up before Min does something overly sentimental in response, like throw the phone or drop to his knees.

That part of it is out of his hands now, more or less. All of their hands. Joon-young can do something drastic himself once he hears, but news doesn't filter that fast. Min breathes for exactly one minute, tops up his coffee, and goes back to his cubicle. Chun-seok's case cites won't proofread themselves.

***

Soju is an opportunity for Eun-bok to brood. He huddles in his jacket and pours for both of them, his mouth twin miserable lines. The students are back, thicker textbooks and broader pimples and just as quick to serve four bottles at once.

"I made sure to park in a better spot," Min says.

"If you drank less it wouldn't matter, hyung."

"Don't speak to me like that." Min takes over pouring when Eun-bok only stares at his empty glass, shoulders sagging and sagging until he has the shape of a coathanger. A frightened Eun-bok then was a _quiet_ Eun-bok, and Eun-bok is quiet again now.

"I talked to her earlier," Eun-bok says, legs awkwardly folded. "She sounds the same. She was still alive when they left."

"I thought you would have pressed to go," Min says carefully, unused to having to coax. Eun-bok should be wheedling details out of him, not the other way round. He arranged it, after all.

"I couldn't. I went halfway last night," Eun-bok says blearily. "I ran out of petrol. The station didn't have my favourites. They don't have them in prison either."

Min offers him a spoonful of soup. Min figures they've arrived at the part of the evening where men feeding each other soup is excusable. Eun-bok looks drunk enough.

I could have done it, hyung."

"Of course. You're his." Every one of Joon-young's children is capable of loyalty. Every one of Joon-young's children is capable of ruthlessness within that loyalty. Every one of Joon-young's children understands the loyalty they owe. Each and every one. Whether they agree with it -- Min has his doubts these days.

"I told her I was a police officer and she was happy for me." Eun-bok fixes on him, hangdog and ugly with it. "Hyung, she remembers him too."

"She does sound talkative." He puts his phone on the table. The clock reads _19:43._ "The last I saw him he had a half-finished autopsy. That was two this afternoon. Did you talk to her after that?"

"She didn't answer the first time and I left a message. She called me back around four. I told her Detective Cha and David Lee were on their way and she said she'd wait up and give them dinner."

Eun-bok's still crouched small. But not as small as Min's seen him try to be, jerking his knees to his chest in reflexive tugs, heaving against scars that flexed and never thinned enough to break. Skinny jeans are a good excuse for limited range of motion. "And him?"

"He picked up a call out at quarter past six. I know what you're saying, hyung."

Min's surer with every twitch in Eun-bok's cheek that this was the correct choice. Eun-bok calls Min hyung, always has. It's good that Min is acting like one for once. "What is it you think I'm saying?"

Eun-bok has a glare that would probably intimidate suspects and Chun-seok. Min finds it a poor effort. "It's pointless to go now. He has a head start."

"David Lee has the head start." He pushes his phone across the table. "I told him to call me when they got there."

"Why do you have his number? Don't tell me you know each other."

"We know each other," Min acknowledges. "Is that such an issue?"

"Do you know how many formal interview requests I've buried? There's enough circumstantial evidence against you already. Don't make this harder for me with _known associates,_ hyung."

"Your part is minor. All you have to do is drink more soju."

"I don't want to owe you anything," Eun-bok says tartly. "My debt is bad enough already."

 _All tests clear_. He's so missed hyung's bare skin. He's so missed his fingers inside Min's mouth and the taste of hyung's skin between his teeth.

"This isn't about your debt, dongsaeng. I'm balancing mine," Min says.

Eun-bok stares at him, at the phone, at him again. Min waits. "You've never called me that before, hyung."

"You never needed it." He realises it's true after he says it -- Eun-bok's always been self-sufficient and Min never cared beyond Joon-young's specific orders.

Officially, it's two and a half hours' drive. But Detective Cha didn't seem the sort of person to sit for hours at a time without a break and the highway through Daejun would have hit evening traffic. There's time yet.

"Don't be so worried," Min says. "If she remembers us, she remembers a teenager on crutches and an asshole hyung."

"He won't stay with that, hyung. He'll ask, and then it'll be official record, and then they'll know." Eun-bok's misery shows itself in raised eyebrows and stress lines around his mouth. "I don't want them to know. It's nothing to do with the job. They'll just -- I can't stand pity. I don't want to be the broken one." Eun-bok drains another shot. "You don't care. He'll want details about the old man. Don't you care about that?"

"Let him ask. I know how much evidence he has. This still won't be enough." He knows hyung. Min could hand him Joon-young on even more of a platter and he still wouldn't bite until he knew it would give him something, and giving enough is not the same as giving anything at all. He's built the last few years on that fact alone.

"You're guessing, hyung."

"Less than you." Two more bottles in Eun-bok's gullet and Min feeding him half the bowl of soup and finally, finally the phone ticks over to _20:27_ and rings.

"Don't tell me." Eun-bok slumps over. "I'll just wait here, hyung."

Min answers. "Jung Sun-ho."

"She's fine," hyung says. "We're about to have dinner. I asked about you." The hesitation is palpable. Soju sits uneasily in his gut, aftertaste acrid on his tongue. "She mentioned your guardian. She said he was your brother. A man with a beautiful mouth."

Joon-young as he used to look. The surgeons started from the top down, piece by piece as they moved around the country. Eyes here, nose there, cheekbones here. The last was his mouth. That needed precision, a thorough beating, a black-market dental surgeon, and five months of listening to Joon-young gasp every time he chewed. He said it was the part of his face that looked like his mother.

"My uncle's aged quite dramatically," Min says, forcing lightness. Eun-bok raises his head, his anxiety so obvious Min scowls and pours him another drink. "He was a handsome man before I wore him out. Isn't that what people say about children?"

"You're withholding. Are you planning on making me wait until I return?"

"I'm not interested in discussing myself on the phone. I did promise."

Hyung scoffs. "Since I'm already here you should give me more information."

"You already have the relevant background. Visual aids are helpful for witness testimony," Min says, very steady, his eyes fixed on Eun-bok's. "Women of that generation usually have their own. But if she doesn't _,_ I have one for you."

His mother's mouth, Joon-young's most sentimental and distinctive feature. Miss Sun's fondness for taking polaroids of her dog. Her dog who was much too stupid to be wary of Min and Joon-young never left him unsupervised with a pet after they had to leave Changwon. Perhaps it exists. Perhaps it doesn't.

If it does, it will only corroborate this. He sketched it earlier between meetings, taking his memo pad from one room to the next, flipping up pages to work on it while the chair droned. He pulls it out of his briefcase and sets it in front of him, open to the right page. Joon-young's old mouth. The new eyes. The new cheeks.

If someone clever and resourceful and aware of the context compared a photo of Joon-young as he was, a picture of Joon-young as he raised them, drawn by an artist skilled as Min, and a photo of Lee Joon-ho, the similarities would be striking. If that clever, resourceful someone is hyung, the connections will draw themselves. Two pieces out of three don't make a correlation but they draw a line.

A pity almost all the prison photos were destroyed, but hyung said he had Joon-young's old files. "Video call, please."

"What are you doing?" Eun-bok whispers. "Hyung, what are you _doing?"_

Min traps his hand to the table before he can snatch up the pad, holding it there as he answers the video request, switches it to the back camera and holds it over the paper. "Take a screenshot in the app, minimal mode." Min wants as little of his information attached to this as possible. Accepting his role isn't the same as being entirely incautious and this program's automatic VPN is the securest route at the moment.

"I took two," hyung says. "Should I ask who that's meant to be?"

"You say that like you haven't already guessed. Don't ask me. Ask her." Min turns off the camera and disables the video call, pausing while the volume adjusts. He pins Eun-bok's hand to the table on top of the previous, perhaps too vehemently. Eun-bok shudders, stops struggling, and muffles sick noises into the sleeve of his shirt. "I suggest you record the interview and aids in a manner admissible in court."

"Sun-ho," hyung says. "If you're telling the truth --"

"If I weren't, it wouldn't be admissible."

"What is the matter? Why are you telling me like this? Why are you handing me this? You know my suspicions." The matter is quite simple. Min is already bait for hyung, set in a trap of Joon-young's making. He already is. Eun-bok is bait for the bait. Sun Mi-young being is alive and well is proof enough of that. Min can't change that on short notice. What he can do is make it hurt Joon-young too.

"Just this. Detective Choi isn't relevant to the reason I wanted you to interview her. This sketch and your suspicions are the reason. Not Detective Choi. As I said, he is a private person. Ask her about the rest and the rest only."

"If I see fit to mention him then I will," hyung says. "Can you accept that?"

"If you can accept limiting it as much as possible." Min hesitates. "If you can accept doing this for me. I didn't mean for you to know this way."

"Or to know at all. That's obvious enough. And now you're giving me this, at this time? When I'm not there to persuade otherwise?" He sighs. It cracks a little in Min's ear. "You know how you like to persuade me. I'm glad you have someone in your life worth this. It's not me, but I'm glad," hyung says quietly, and hangs up.

Eun-bok is staring like he's never seen him before. Min lets him go and Eun-bok pulls his hands back, flexing his fingers gingerly against his chest, gulping back what might be vomit or fear. "I just told you not to make it worse."

"My test results came back clear. Remember? Now we are even." Min puts away the memo pad and fishes out his wallet, one of the students already reaching for a card reader. "I'll drive you home."

In the car Eun-bok slumps against his seatbelt, the edge cutting hard into his cheek and his hands still buried in his hoodie. "How does making yourself killable count as evens?"

"You really are drunk," Min snaps. The question hurts. Make himself, as though he hasn't come close already. But of course he hasn't, it's just Joon-young. But the things hyung says.

If Joon-young thinks he's expendable, then _why_ all these years of sex and reliance and being two-as-one, _why._ He doesn't want it to be true, but -- there was an old fear, a long time ago. That the old pact of Joon-young taking him at hyung's command still exists somehow. That there is something between them and maybe Joon-young would prefer that, would prefer to lure hyung to him and throw Min away.

He doesn't want it to be true. He doesn't want it to be anything more than a nightmare.

But the floor, the _things_ hyung says, and they're wrong, but -- they're wrong. But the things he says. The floor. Joon-young might want them both. But Min doesn't think hyung would allow it. Even if he knows everything. And then, Joon-young would --

Min doesn't know what Joon-young would do faced with that kind of provocation and he's running out of hyung's patience. He promised to talk, and if he doesn't he doesn't know what hyung will do either. He doesn't know what she will say. How much of it hyung will dismiss, how much will be fabricated by memory, how much of it will just be unimportant cruft. How much of all this is a desperate gamble on Joon-young's love of drama and hyung's apparent unwillingness to reject Jung Sun-ho entirely.

The way hyung pulled back like Min disgusted him is still one of the worst things Min's ever felt. They had so many passing neighbours, coworkers, supervisors, subordinates, classmates and Min knows there are others Joon-young didn't kill. How much more will it take, how many more paintings, how many more loosely connected deaths, before hyung asks him questions Min knows he'll run out of the strength to refuse?

He almost wants to know if hyung would still touch him. Almost wants to spread all of his lies at his feet and watch, not for his pain, but for what might happen afterwards. Almost. If it would be as bad as hyung flinching from him or so much worse. It would take so little. Hyung has two points, but not three. Just one more. One left.

He breathes out. "All I did was make it clear you aren't important."

"I'm never important, hyung. I'm useful." Eunbok is a smooth-skinned man, smoother still in the dim flow of traffic and the neon of brakelights, lolling doll-like in drunkenness. "I don't know if it'll work. The old man will know you did it."

"He pointed the way to her to begin with. I just suggested the topic." Min considers whether he cares about Eun-bok's opinions. "You should appreciate it."

"I worry about my job more, hyung."

Min thinks about Detective Cha and the work Joon-young put into buttering her up. Her father rotting in a field. The now inextricable connection of Lee Joon-young to what the media calls the Signal Murders. What hyung might say to him when he gets back. The slow inevitability of hyung's brilliance driving closer and closer to the truth. "You shouldn't. There'll be work for you tomorrow."

He didn't have to help him get closer still. By another measure he did have to. It's that measure which has Eun-bok asleep in his passenger seat and Ja-hee sending selfies from her hospital bed and _hyung hyung hyung_ still beating steadily beneath his ribcage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say how much I love every one of your comments? I LOVE THEM. I'm having a great time writing this and it's wonderful that you like my fun (and my fic) enough to comment on it! How fantastic is that? So fantastic. You're all fantastic.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It just makes no sense that Min is this comprehensively isolated in the show, so ... this is my explanation, I guess. A couple things -- Jo Yong-woo from the previous chapter was the hitman from episode 14 and the Changwon references here are to the retired prosecutor's creepy child-killer story in episode 8.

Min tells himself he did his best when he wakes up and there's still nothing apart from an email about the office request being formally accepted secondary to his promotion. Promoted. It should feel like something but it doesn't. All he knows is the unnamed slouch to his shoulders he remembers from waiting on the stoop.

He did his best with what he could and what he had, given the circumstances. There's no point killing a witness when their testimony is already multiple-filed across local and national police departments, already small articles about the Perfect Killer case being re-opened. That more or less takes care of Miss Sun. No point when both the testimonial witnesses are people Joon-young wants alive for now -- he'd have to give up on thinking himself benevolently guarding her if he killed Detective Cha. If he killed hyung he'd have to give up on him filling that mysterious, eternal gap Min's never been able to touch.

Would it be worth it still? Not yet. Min doesn't think so. He hopes not. Enough evidence to investigate an old suspect is still not enough evidence of proof of identity, and it's that which Joon-young would take to the grave. Joon-young would know that much about the process. About what, exactly, Min gave up.

It's a gamble. Min's well aware. He's gambling on how much he knows about Joon-young and the shapes of the things he doesn't know. He's gambling that buying a house was about hyung, and the murders are about hyung, and stroking him against the wall was about hyung. It's a gamble, two out of three.

He doesn't think he's entirely wrong. He hopes he isn't. Min's not familiar with hope but if any time is an opportunity to practice, it's now.

Most of all Min hopes hyung will forgive him.

***

"We get an office!" Chun-seok crows at the sight of Min, bustling up with his arms over his head and his shoulders bunched to his ears.

Min eyes the other cubicles, full of purse-mouthed attorneys either ignoring them or whispering to each other, and takes Chun-seok to the latest coffee location. It's three floors down today in the paper basement, or the Wall of Wail as the interns assigned to catalogue it call it. There's a legend about an intern dying under a stack of papers. Min wishes he'd been the one to start that rumour.

"You coffee kidnapping assholes are _scary as shit,"_ Chun-seok says, hovering maddeningly close. He's still beaming.

It's a good place to hide a coffee machine. "Have you seen them?"

"I wouldn't go touring without you, asshole." Chun-seok purses his lips, making them flap as he thinks. It's his most unattractive habit among a constellation of unattractive habits. "We've got a pick of three. Window and smaller, not window and bigger, bit of window and middle size. But the aircon's fucked in that one. I didn't think you'd want it."

He's not about to say Chun-seok's right. He'd never be allowed to forget. "Window," Min says.

Chun-seok grins and rubs his hands together and takes the travel mug Min hands him. "Yeah? Keep your lunch free, asshole, we're going _window shopping._ Get it?" He deflates when Min pointedly doesn't smile. "Asshole."

Min shoves him, not gently, to the door. "It's not lunchtime yet."

"I'm funny. Even my dates say I'm funny. You don't think so because you're an asshole."

"Your dates were humouring you," Min says, closing the door behind him and following him to the lift.

Chun-seok squawks, startling a pair of interns who jump and plaster their armfuls of papers to their chests with a thump. "Is this what I've got to look forward to? Jesus. Why don't I just stick to my cubicle for another year and room with someone not an asshole?"

"That'll never happen," Min says. Their entire cohort is sponsored entries, either deeply invested in 'making a difference to the country' or snatched from other offers by promises of bonuses and holiday time. A deprecated job market only puts the higher-paid positions under more pressure to _be_ highly paid and in turn filled by people Chun-seok would call assholes. Network economics.

"You're so fucking depressing." Chun-seok sips his coffee and brightens. "An _office_ and we don't even have a court date. Oh, yeah." He fumbles his phone out of his pocket. "Chairman Kim fucking loves you. He might marry you. You'd be rich forever."

Chairman Kim is a short man with grey hair and a salesman's face and a strong preference for young, flat girlfriends easily bought off with a few mid-tier diamonds. "No."

"Really fucking rich. You could quit and let me have the office all by myself. You could _get a hobby._ What hobbies do assholes have?"

"I live," Min says, "to spoil your fun."

"Asshole." Chun-seok grins and knocks his mug against his. "Go ruin someone else's day."

***

Min proceeds to ruin the day for five paralegals, four legal clerks, three attorneys and two prosecutorial assistants. All that and choosing the office with the window makes him feel only a little better about hyung's continued silence.

Attorney Kang pulls him into her office at four. "What crawled up your arse and died and what can you do to shit it out?"

Min doesn't sit down on her couch, stands beside it with his hands in his pockets instead. "We don't have a date for Chairman Kim's case. Not even a second pretrial. Isn't it too early for a promotion?"

It's unlikely they'll fail. It's unlikely _he_ will fail. Unlikely isn't enough of a guarantee for someone as set on tracking win-loss ratios as Attorney Kang. His defense record is still the best but he hasn't maintained it as well as he'd like. Especially this last month.

She folds her arms, the heel of her shoe tapping the leg of her desk. "You could say that. But we've talked it over and we think you've earned it. Doesn't matter you had that probationary blip a few years ago, you made up for it. That interview resolved a couple of open cases on the side. I won't mince words. You're a headache. You understand that? You're a headache."

Min shifts his shoulders, unsure where this is going. It sounds like he's about to be thrown out of her office as abruptly as she summoned him to it. "This promotion won't take me out of your supervisory duties."

"Right, it doesn't. You would've gone to Attorney Park if I promoted you another level. You definitely haven't earned that yet. He doesn't like the risks you take. I'm not fond of them either. But I understand why you do it. Risks are necessary. If you want to call this a risk, okay. It's a necessary risk. Prove to Attorney Park you're worth the headache and you'll get ahead from here. Got it?"

Her confidence is bewildering. Min's never been sure if she approves of him or tolerates him until he can be plausibly replaced with someone more pleasant. "Does that mean I can rely on your support?"

She purses her mouth. "To a degree. If I need to run it past Judge Su or Prosecutor Ha, I won't override them. But for smaller things I'll hear you out. If you think it's necessary. It shouldn't be necessary a lot. If it is, you're in the wrong line of work."

"Of course. I understand." Min hesitates, then takes his hands out of his pockets and bows deeply. "Thank you."

"The hell of it is, I think you actually like this job. The metrics aren't just you being excellent, but you giving a shit." Her arms are still folded when he straightens. "Do you?"

Min doesn't know what to say. It's not that he can say he _likes_ it. It suits him, that's all. He would mind other jobs more. He has hated other jobs more. "My role is to trust my client and defend them the best I can. If I win a case I shouldn't, it's the prosecution's responsibility. It's clear-cut."

"Clear-cut," she repeats, studying him behind her glasses, the grey streaks in her hair reflecting blue-tinted strip lighting. "I think you sincerely believe that. That's a shame, because that's the biggest fucking lie I have heard today and you believe me, I have heard some whoppers. All right." She unfolds her arms and stands. "I'll get you a trial date soon. Stop terrorising people. You earned this. Act like it."

 _You earned this_ settles something in his chest he didn't realise was there, might have been there ever since Attorney Park slammed him against the wall and scolded him in the prison so long ago, and he bows again, unsure how to repay her in anything but badly-fitting humility. "Yes, Attorney Kang."

"Go move in before someone cc's the entire building."

***

Prosecutor Shin summons him two floors up into Judge Su's office, interrupting Min's scheduled fifteen minutes of packing up his desk. "Interesting case you brought my Young-dong fellow."

"I thought it might be best to lend a hand," Min says, unsurprised that Detective Cha blabbed who loaned her the car. "If it turned out to be interesting."

"It did, it did." He eyes the closed door thoughtfully, hands open on his spread knees. "Lee Joon-young, huh. I'm retiring soon. Law's no place for an old man with a stroke."

Min sits when bid. His next meeting will have to wait. "It's your mind that matters."

"Does it? Interesting. Listen. You know my memory."

Five years ago in Prosecutor Shin's polished office. _You, huh. You and that kid you killed. Hm?_ The long breath of being remembered from Changwon. Min doesn't remember much of that year himself. He was angry and he didn't want to believe hyung gave him away and everyone was so _happy_ with their stupid _pets_ and their stupid _children_ and their stupid _families_ and just _asking_ for someone to rip it up and _show them._

Joon-young says Min was difficult. Min doesn't remember being difficult. He remembers success and the brightness of pumping blood. For a long time only the richest ultramarine pigments were as bright and welcome to his eyes. These days he has hyung's smile. "Yes."

"Very good. So. Lee Joon-young's case was complicated. It's fortunate we got him for the robbery murders, eh? Though he escaped. Tell me why you're bringing it up now."

"I have reason to believe it is relevant," Min says.

Prosecutor Shin reaches for tea, awkward with his offhand. "You shouldn't be getting above your station, Attorney Jung. Do you remember Lee Hyun? Ah, I suppose he goes by David Lee these days."

He picks his words carefully. He meant it, when he said it was his mind that mattered. "I remember. Lee Joon-min's son."

"Yes, that kid," Prosecutor Shin says. "He's been meddling."

"You could have put the locals on speakerphone," Min says. "To discuss the legalities of his consultation. I understand his fee is quite steep. What did you want to tell me alone?"

"Just that. You shouldn't meddle either."

Min feels his eyes flicker, and from the fold of Prosecutor Shin's mouth it was obvious. Too obvious. "I have no intention of engaging in any criminal act."

"Reopening this case is treading very close to opening others. You know that?"

"David Lee is made of sterner stuff than his father. I understand that worries you."

Prosecutor Shin sucks air between his teeth. "You really get above yourself. Tread carefully."

"Of course. I always do tread carefully with a man of your reputation. Prosecutor Shin." Getting above himself is, in a different word, ambition. Min is always ambitious and he always will be. How can he not? There's a void in him. Closing it needs more than this. And more, and more, and more, and it will not be disturbed by prosecutors so pathetic they rely on false evidence.

Min encounters them from time to time, the small local officials reliant on having a better standard than their neighbours to inflate their egos. They are the same, however much the press calls them heroes. However much this office glares with medals of commendation tarnished by association.

Min encounters them, and Min wins.

"Hmph. I will make the decisions here. You will go through me. _I_ caught Lee Joon-young. _I_ prosecuted him. _I_ did so. It was mine in the beginning. His case is my victory. Do you know? Hm?"

He's heard much more effective threats. Min pretends to be cowed, just a little. Meeting in Judge Su's office is a tactical move as much as a convenient one, a reminder of the pressure Prosecutor Shin has at his fingertips. "I know, sir. My favour was genuine. The detective needed a car and I loaned her the use of one. That's all I meant by it."

Prosecutor Shin studies him.

Min smiles back, holding himself very still. "Are favours illegal, these days? I wasn't aware. A shame if they were. You wouldn't be able to ask me for one. Right?"

"You should have been a prosecutor," Prosecutor Shin says. "You have the mind."

"I don't believe I do." Min never considered it. To be a prosecutor is to decide what is _right,_ and Min's never been capable of that. There is only what he wants and what he can do. To have the bounds of articles, generous as they are… it helps him choose. "I am not a large thinker. You prosecute the many. I defend the individual."

"Interesting. An interesting thought. It's actually the other way round."

"Is it?" Min holds his smile. "I suppose it is because we are on different sides."

Prosecutor Shin sits forward. "Are you sure about that?"

Of course Min is sure. Prosecutor Shin is backing Prosecutor Ha, who is the prosecutor working the Chairman Kim case. There is no more direct opposite in Min's career than a prosecutor bent on restoring the reputation of the corporate crimes department. "I wouldn't dare to refuse a request from an inspirational person like you, Prosecutor."

"Hardly a request!" Prosecutor Shin chuckles and reaches for his teacup again, arm draped on his knee. "The past is best left alone, hm? This case. Make sure it is a new one. Let the dead rest. Hm?"

"On whose behalf should they rest?" Min thinks it's a fair question. He may well be asked to posthumously defend Lee Joon-young with such open terms.

Prosecutor Shin waves a hand. "No, no. No-one in particular, of course. But if you could look out for the team, see what they're up to. Tell me about it. I would see that very favourably. I hear you were just promoted?"

Now here's a threat much more credible. "I was. I'm moving offices today."

"Hmm. Hmm, you know, there could be a mixup. It may be too early for you. I could look into it, make sure it goes smoothly." He pats the plague on Judge Su's desk. "You could do this for me."

Min smiles and lies. "Of course, sir."

***

His kitchen smells like one of Joon-young's standbys halfway through cooking, before he's seared the meat and the onions haven't yet caramelised. Min stops in the doorway, hands in pockets, to watch his back.

For someone who handles things the way he does, he doesn't come across as a particularly broad man. He's a man with mismatched socks and his t-shirts a collection of albatross discards. Min's used to watching him cook. He's done it most of his life, for most of his meals. Even now, here they are. Min behind him, watching him cook.

Joon-young knowing he is there. Trusting him there. Both because Min does think there is _some_ trust, if not much, and because Min is not a threat. He's not sure he could kill him, if he tried. He's not sure he could bring himself to cross that line from mouthwateringly crisp fantasy to the deed itself. In some ways his first disappointment with Joon-young was when he changed the bandage on his neck and Min discovered he too bled just like everyone else.

Every disappointment since including this one is only an extension of that first discovery: Joon-young human and perishable. Was he always jealous, long before Min knew him? It makes sense to Min. A child like Joon-young, left with a little, would hoard it until it grew priceless. Is Min such a thing?

"Uncle," Min says.

"Go change," Joon-young says. There's champagne on the table.

Min eyes it, then does as he's told, showering off the faint grime beginning to show on the collar of his shirt as well as the remains of his makeup. Min checks in the mirror, wiping off steam, and finds the ones on his neck and face have just about faded into smears of purpled green. There's no point in covering them for Joon-young.

When he gets back dinner is laid out on the table and champagne fills the narrow flutes Joon-young prefers. "Ah, Min. Come eat. You must be hungry."

He is a little. "What are you celebrating, uncle?"

"Your promotion, of course. An office of your own, right? You've been looking forward to that for years."

"I have." Min sips reluctantly. "It's shared, though."

Joon-young's face goes placid, mouth relaxing, and Min feels a brief and petty pleasure at being able to surprise him. "Is it? Well, that's too bad. You'll manage. When do you think you'll qualify for your own?"

"One of the senior attorneys said I'm on track for another promotion as long as I follow orders."

"Ah, yes." Joon-young nods thoughtfully, chewing. "Your case closure rate. That's quite good, I thought."

"Of course," Min says.

"Of course it is," Joon-young echoes, and taps the rim of his flute against Min's. "You've done well."

Sometimes Min misses the days before having hyung back so much it's a terrible ache. He didn't expect to miss those times of whining and pining and painting the same thing over and over, but things were different with Joon-young then. He thought he knew so much about him. "I will continue to do well. Then I will have an office of my own and a door I can close."

"A secretary," Joon-young suggests. "To take your calls. Fewer interruptions."

"That would help," Min says, and none of his pleasure at the thought, at Joon-young's thought of him, how he is known by someone, is feigned. None of it. It doesn't hurt to agree with him. It doesn't hurt at all. It still feels like a handshake, a mutual extension of selves.

Min wonders what the dividing line is between liking a person and disliking a person. Between hating someone and needing them. If there is a line at all. If it's a constellation of choices, built into piles until one overwhelms the other and forces a decision. There are so many choices between them now.

He has sex with Joon-young afterwards, stretches on the couch and laps at his cock, finding him so familiar it's like sucking a thumb. Joon-young picks a wooden one this time, polished and light, and the lack of weight makes it easier to rut into the mat beneath him and almost enjoy the drag of rubber on his bruises.

Joon-young fills the condom and gets up, leaving Min to lever himself onto his back, the leather arm warm and pleasant against his naked calves, the softness of the cushions bracing the dildo inside him. He reaches for his own cock idly, using the back of the couch to prop his elbow out of brushing against his belly. It makes the angle awkward at best, and he sighs.

"Allow me," Joon-young says, returning bare from the kitchen sink, his pubic hair damp and bright. "To celebrate your promotion."

"What will you do, uncle?"

Joon-young kneels, pushing at Min's thigh, and rolls down a condom, fussing with it at the root. He's so particular about cutting his thumbnails to get the reservoirs seated just right. "Min." He sounds so fond it cuts through Min, reminds him he knows this man. Knows him, wants him. "Keep up."

"What is there to keep up with?" He doesn't like Joon-young confusing him.

"You should pay attention," his smile patient, and he licks his lips and takes Min into his mouth, then pulls back. "I was fairly practiced at this once," he mutters. "Let us see."

He bats away Min's hand when he reaches for him, and Min digs his fists into cushions instead, into the seam along the back of the couch, thinking vague imprecations on lint and vacuum machines reaching the end of their life and Joon-young's experimenting tongue.

Min braces his foot against the couch arm when Joon-young settles, the line of his spine easing like he's made a decision, and goes for a rhythm that has Min struggling desperately not to fuck up into his mouth, not to fuck up in any way at all lest Joon-young stop.

Joon-young fucks him instead, takes hold of it as he takes hold of him in his mouth, and it drives Min to choking inelegantly on his fingers, drooling around his fist.

"So," Joon-young says conversationally against the side of his cock, "I'm curious."

"No," Min groans, a hairsbreadth away from begging. "Finish first."

"You think so?" Joon-young gives him another slow, methodical thrust so angled for his organs and their places in Min's body that he alternately howls and squeezes tears out of his eyes, his bladder half-twitching and his prostate an abrupt awareness.

"Stop, then," Min grunts, managing to uncurl his fingers and pull them away from his mouth. "Stop and ask me. Don't do it like this, uncle."

"Why not?" Joon-young sounds curious. "Is there a reason I shouldn't? I've found it's very effective for you."

"I'm healing." Min gestures weakly to his belly. "You should wait."

"For answers? I don't think waiting rather than investigating would be your professional advice."

Min tries to breathe. He's never -- he's never refused Joon-young before. Never tried to. It's territory he doesn't know how to navigate. But he doesn't want to be braced for this every time. He doesn't want to come to expect that it's just something to use. He used to think that it was something they kept between them to share it.

Not these games Joon-young plans and uses against him, and not when he's _sober._ He hasn't even had enough champagne.

He misses hyung terribly. "This isn't professional. Who was it who always told me to finish what I started?"

"That is true," Joon-young says, regarding Min with a face so open that Min draws up his knees. "You really do know better. How come, then?"

"Finish, uncle."

Joon-young smiles and bends his head again, his arm draping an insistent, aching weight across his hips, stinging when Min inhales. "I will indulge you this time."

It's a twisting, aching fuck. The more he moves the more it hurts, the more it hurts the better Joon-young makes it feel. Joon-young's good at drawing him up, brushing his open mouth over the tip of his cock, licking his lips as though his cock is only incidental, and the wet sweep of it drives Min to begging around the fingers he has crammed in his mouth, held in by a hand over his face as though any of that could stop the high, cracked whine that fades out of his hearing whenever Joon-young draws the dildo out of him only to renew when he shoves it back.

Min collapses after he comes, gasping relief and pain so sharp it knocks the wind out of him. For a few moments he indulges himself just untangling his hands and draping them wet on his chest.

Joon-young pats his thigh and gets to his feet, his hand going to his jaw and testing the joints. "You should clean up and tell me what the matter is."

He reaches for his cock only to have his hand slapped away, knuckles stinging.

"Get your breath back first." Joon-young sounds patient as he works the condom off him.

Min licks his lips. "At least take it out."

"Ah, yes." It's so fast, such a yank at such a wrong angle, that Min bites the meat of his thumb in a desperate attempt to halt a wheeze so sudden his lungs feel sunken and small in its wake. "Still? It's too early to sleep."

Min gets up, his knees threatening to falter, and showers again, and dresses again, and emerges to Joon-young at the table with a teapot and two cups. He sits slowly and takes one of the cups, nursing it in his palms, the print of his teeth vivid on his left hand.

Min wonders, now, if those days are gone forever. If every time they have sex he will think about the floor the way he thinks about their mother whenever he sees purple hyacinths. If the pleasure of being Joon-young's exception slipped away without Min noticing and left him with this push-pull of demands and expectations and nowhere to lose himself in knowing Joon-young wants him.

It's Joon-young who knows him, whom he knows. It's always something to be so touched by him. Min stretches for him and he enjoys it, likes being trusted and kept and made special. Having his mouth on his cock makes Min special. That's the same. But it didn't empty his head, only filled it. It didn't sate him, only made him miss hyung. It didn't feel an adult decision the way handling a case is the result of hard work as much as luck.

For the last while having sex with him feels like being a child in the back of a car, unknowing of the destination. Of the rest of his life. Of what happened to the life left behind. It's the wretched smallness of staying on the edge and watching the others play games with invisible restraints he doesn't understand.

It's not supposed to feel like this.

Being with him is not supposed to feel like being alone.

He wants Joon-young. He wants to be with him. He wants to stay with him and be stayed with. He wants forever. He wants to be understood by him and understand in turn. He wants Joon-young's touch and Joon-young to want his. He wants to be special to him, allowed to touch him, allowed to see him breathing hard and thinking and curious. He wants to be held up by Joon-young's sight and told he is more than he thinks. That's always been the why of what Min wants from him. To be more than. To feel like more than.

And Joon-young is and Joon-young does and Joon-young has _but,_ and there lies the qualifier on the previously infinite of Joon-young's mercies. The rub.

"You should tell me what you are thinking," Joon-young says.

Min raises an eyebrow, staring into the pale green of his tea. Too pale, too thin. He's never bothered to mind, but -- and there it is again.  "I think I'm growing up, uncle. I don't like the same things. My dislikes are also changing."

Joon-young cradles his teacup close to his ever-so-serious face, his brows gently puzzled, and Min loves him. Ja-hee must have meant this too when she said _of course_ in bed. He loves him. "What do you mean?"

"A coworker tricked me into eating turnip the other day and I didn't mind. I used to throw a tantrum whenever you tried to make me eat it."

"It's good for you," Joon-young says, and then he smiles. "I think it is fine. Change is not uncommon."

"But not for us. Right?" Min rubs his fingertip over the rim of his cup, the tiny squeaks like guideposts. "You are my guardian. You have been my guardian for a long time. You still cook for me."

Joon-young frowns. "I want you to be healthy. It is good to take care of your family."

He takes a very slow breath, lets it out as a sigh slower still. He doesn't lift his eyes from his teacup, his tea, his finger. "We have had sex for a long time."

"True. It's been a successful experiment." Joon-young sounds pleased. "I am still finding new hypotheses to test. Isn't that surprising?"

"I want to end the experiment," Min says, and the world around him goes quiet and still. Someone's car starting is muffled; an argument drifting in faint vowels drops into silence; Joon-young says nothing. The volume of his nothingness drowns out everything but the sound of the pulse inside Min's head.

Min sips tea. He sips, and he sips, feeling Joon-young's eyes on his face. He sips and keeps his face as still as his eyes, as focused. He sips, and sips, until there is no tea left, and Joon-young has still not spoken. He keeps his shoulders straight, though he'd like to allow them to slump; he keeps his eyes down, though he'd like to lift them and beg.

"There are easier ways to tell me such things," Joon-young says, "than silly pictures."

"I wanted your attention."

He can hear Joon-young's smile in his voice. "You always have my attention."

The memory of the floor almost makes him look up. Almost. He counts four out, holds it, counts four in and holds his breath again. "This attention. Not the other kind."

"It's good you tell me these things, Min. Well, I agree. It ends."

Min startles and finds Joon-young nonchalant as though Min were asking for another piece of kimchi. "What?"

"Yes. There are two participants. Naturally if you withdraw, then there is only one participant. I find experimenting alone is tedious. So we end the experiment." Joon-young smiles.

This easy? It can't be this easy. Is it? Min doesn't know how to ask. "You won't miss it?"

Joon-young sips tea, a shoulder lifting briefly. "Should I? Though there are more hypotheses to test, the central assumptions have stood for some time now. I think it is fine."

Min breathes, somehow, through the rattling, gurgling noise that wants to pour out of him and spill bile and blood and hyacinths everywhere. Joon-young is everything hyung isn't and to Joon-young Min is -- he doesn't know what he is. "May I ask the results?"

"Oh, the results," Joon-young says vaguely. "They're for someone else."

It all comes together then, in a wrench and twist and sink, the realisation of biting into a maggoted tomato, or a wormed apple. The realisation of nakedness where once there was none, the realisation there will never be an opportunity to catch stars. The realisation of what, exactly, he has been worth.

It's the same. To Joon-young, it's the same. Min is everything hyung isn't.

"Of course, uncle." He stares at Joon-young's easy smile, swallowing until his mouth is dry and he might be able to say a word without smashing every piece of dishware he owns. "I'm tired."

Min stands at the door, watches him get into his shoes and coat. Joon-young smiles at him, standing close, and raises his hand to level between the tops of their heads. "You really have grown," showing him the small pinch of his finger and thumb. "Look at that."

He presses that pinch to Min's cheek, smooths it with the pat of his hand, and if Min didn't know better he could think he was always Joon-young's favourite.

***

"What do you want?" Hyung sounds unwilling and wary and so, so _necessary_ and Min clutches the phone closer to his ear, his face, his neck straining with the effort to cradle around it as though something so small and hard could ever replace hyung. But it's hyung's voice, his connection to him, and it's everything. "Sun-ho, what's wrong?"

"I just… wanted to hear you," Min says. "Can you talk? Just for a bit."

"There's too much to talk about." hyung scoffs. "Sun-ho, what are you in the middle of? How much do you know? How much of it is relevant, how much of it has to do with twenty years ago, how much of what you said about Busan was a lie, not least everything to do with Min --"

"I don't mean that," Min interrupts, cringing at his name in hyung's mouth. He likes it better when he says Sun-ho. "Just to talk. Not that. Can you?"

Hyung makes that considering sound. "You said you would."

"Over dinner. It's not dinner. I just -- would you just talk to me? Please. I'm asking you."

"You have a habit of unfair requests," hyung says. "You ask a lot. This is asking a lot of me. You have asked a lot already."

Min breathes in shakily. Either he gets off the phone in the first few minutes, or he stays on the phone for at least half an hour. There's not much inbetween with hyung. Min needs to eke out more time. "That doesn't say if you will."

"No, it does. Of course I will. Against my better judgement, but I will because you sound so bad. What do you want to hear?"

"This is a bad time to ask for nice things, isn't it?" Min huddles, beginning to sweat in his shirt. He was too … something, to bother taking off his clothes. "Just. Nice things."

Hyung sounds concerned. "Did he say something to you?"

"I said something to him." The memory of how _well_ Joon-young took it sits uneasily. "I told him I wanted to stop having sex," Min says.

"What did he say?" so carefully controlled. "Sun-ho. What happened then?"

"Nothing. He said it was an experiment. He said I am a satisfactory proof of hypothesis."

Hyung's quiet long enough that Min gives up on lying down and switches him to speaker, hovering close to the bed while he undoes his cuffs and takes off his tie. Some days they did it a little like this, Min narrating what he took off, listening to the order hyung wanted. Some days he propped up the phone and let hyung watch.

Last summer hyung always made one of Min's favourite noises, a thick, roused purr, when Min undid his cuffs and pushed them up his forearms. Especially if the links were gold and he turned back his cuffs first and let them stand stiff around his elbows. Min liked taking advantage of that.

It's too cold for such attempts now, and he shivers into fleece for sleep, drawing the hood tight, and considers if to take the phone to the bathroom.

"Who was it all for?" Hyung sounds angry. "Who was it for, if not you?"

It's a hard thing to think. Harder to know. Harder still to say. But he's sure now. He's absolutely sure. "I told you he liked you," Min says, and he perches his phone in the cabinet and squeezes toothpaste. "I think it's always been you. I'm just an understudy."

"Never to me," hyung says immediately, so sharp it cracks. He clears his throat. "Not to me. I told you. I have told you. I meant it. I am not interested in your uncle."

"You compared to me to him once." Saying it is like scratching a burr beneath his skin in the faint hope of removing it. Saying it is acknowledging what he told him with that drawing. _My uncle is Lee Joon-young._ "I reminded you of him."

"At the time I had no way of knowing. When I showed her the picture she said that it was the guardian she remembered. She said it was exactly him." He makes a pained noise. "What I said must have hurt. I am sorry for that."

"It's fine," Min says, easing his grip on his toothbrush. It's not, but hyung's voice is soothing. "I don't want to talk about that."

"Right, as you said. It is not dinner and you called me for other things. What makes you so sure it is me?"

"Anyone else wouldn't make sense. It was an implication. A series of implications." Min presses his forehead to the cabinet, mirror-glass cold on his skin. "You do have an interest in such people."

"True. However, I am interested in their crime and the pathology of a criminal mind," hyung says. "I am not interested personally. He can try for my attention. The rest is yours."

Min puts his toothbrush in his mouth, takes it out again. "He's a better person than I am. It might not seem so, but there are many -- he is a generous person. He knows how to be kind. He provides for people. I am not like that."

"I prefer honest disinterest to dishonest charm," hyung says. "I always have. If that is a problem it is a problem of my character, not yours."

"There are too many problems with my character," Min says. Being around other people so much lately has shown him that. He can try to be a capable person hyung would want, but he isn't yet. He isn't at all. He starts brushing.

Hyung sighs. "We can talk about that, or we can talk about the real issue."

"What's that?" Min mumbles.

"You think because he is who I suspect he is, there is a chance that when he shows interest I will go to him. You think I will leave you like that. You think you're a monster, but what would you call the person you think I am?"

"That's not true," burbling through toothpaste, and he wipes his mouth. "You know it's more complicated than that."

"It really isn't." Hyung talks over him, keeps talking. "It is not more complicated. You want it to be complicated. That doesn't make it so. When will you believe me that I --" Min hears him sigh, a sad, sagging sound. "At least tell me _why_ you don't believe me. This is not generalised cynicism. This is a specific recurring problem between you and me. Why?"

Min brushes determinedly, avoiding his own eyes in the mirror, his mouth full of suds.

Why, hyung asks. Why.

That promise to keep him safe. That promise he betrayed. The years of believing hyung gave him away, the years hyung didn't look for him. The years of watching his career rise and rise, books and interviews and consultancies, _environmental factors._ The years of hyung searching for someone who was not Min. Searching for Lee Joon-young, killer after killer, lecture after lecture. Talking about him in words large and small, speaking of brains, dissecting their parts and listing the Latin. The whys and hows and motivations of murder. All of it circling back to Lee Joon-young.

They've been rehearsing for each other for so long, hyung and Joon-young. The least he can do is answer him, this man who was once only Hyun his lover, and then both hyung and Hyun, lover and brother, and now is hyung always because it's all he wants. The least he can do is be honest the way he said he liked.

Min spits and rinses. "I'm in the way. I'm just … in the way." It's hard to say, and he curls over the sink, breathing in the stink of mint and drain cleaner, finding the floor with a clumsy hand. "He likes talking about you. He's so proud of you what you've done with your career. He reads your articles over and over, pointing out some turn of phrase he likes. He celebrates when you get a new position. When we three of us had dinner, I thought, 'he's never been so happy when it's just us'. He kissed me in the hallway and I thought -- but we came downstairs and I knew he kissed me because of you."

"I don't know what to say." His voice is so soft but it still echoes. "I wanted to avoid coming between you and making the situation worse, but it sounds like I have."

"I didn't mean to be disappointing. It just happened like that." Min scrubs at his face. "That's why. That's why."

"Lee Joon-young has a lot to answer for," hyung says. "Not least what he's done to you."

"I suppose," Min says, "you want to talk about that at dinner."

"Yes. It's not the right time. Do you acknowledge my suspicions as to his identity?"

Betraying Joon-young should be harder than this. "I acknowledge."

Min uses the pause to claw himself back to standing. He splashes water on his cheeks, rubs the rheumy rim of his lashes, and leave the bathroom. The tiles are too cold, his clothes damp, and his bed is welcome in its familiar lumps. He leaves the phone on speaker, arranging it on the pillow beside his face. It's hyung. Even if he's not speaking, it's hyung.

"You called asking for me to say nice things. Do you still want that?"

"I always do," Min says.

Hyung requests a video call; Min shuffles onto his back and answers it, balancing his phone on his thumbs. There's always a bit of a scramble after Min answers video calls, a few moments of watching the camera flick over hyung's face and his frowning eyebrows while he finds somewhere to sit and present himself. He cares about the light, about the fact that overheads make him look dull and blue lights make him sallow. Min enjoys these lurching, seasick moments of pretending hyung cares about the way Min looks at him.

Hyung appears to settle on the bed, a lamp to the side and a pillow crushing his hairstyle. "He used your insecure personality like this and that is his responsibility," hyung says, eyes fixed seriously on the camera itself and not the screen, his stare direct. "It is also his responsibility that he fails to acknowledge or allows you to realise you are much more than he gives you credit for."

Min's ears burn. He wants to speak, but nothing comes out when he tries, and he presses his lips together and stares back at him, watching his frown, the way semidarkness hints at pixels in the backlit plane of his cheek and jaw.

More than Joon-young expects? It's impossible.

"You don't believe me," hyung says.

He shakes his head, adjusting his grip on the phone. "I have a feeling you also won't believe me. My uncle is a generous person. He is a much better person. That is why being compared to him bothered me. He is better, and I am ungrateful."

Hyung brings the phone closer to his face, framing his eyes, the mole on his cheek, the boyish forehead exposed by his hair. "You're right. I don't believe that. Shall we try something else? You might classify it as a nice thing."

"Like what?" Min doesn't quite understand. What else is there?

"There was a reason I wanted the camera," hyung says, and he tilts the phone, slowly, showing Min his body. His _bare_ body, nude and lovely and poised, the careless overlapping arch of his feet perfect.

"You're twenty minutes away. This is ridiculous," Min manages to say. Hyung is stunning. His thick cock and his dark pubic hair is stunning. The slight trail on his belly and his broad chest and his wicked smile when the camera returns to his face is stunning. "Ridiculous."

"Mm." Hyung's eyes crinkle. "All of this. All of me, for you. Just you. Does that feel better?"

"You're _twenty minutes away,_ " Min repeats, incredulous, sweating, trying to remember where he left his keys. Hyung is beautiful and impossible. "Should I --"

"It won't be me," hyung says, "I haven't any clothes on. Shall I confirm that?" His hand strokes over his cheek, fingertips on his jaw, and slides out of camera.

"Are you --"

Hyung lifts his chin, eyes half-closing, shoulders shifting and his tongue pink in his mouth in a way Min knows is exactly the moment he presses his palm to his cock and curls his fingers under. "I'm all yours, Sun-ho." It's the gentlest thing he's ever said.

"You're going to make me talk about it," Min protests.

"At dinner. This isn't because of that. This is because I want your attention. I'm not sorry he agreed to stop. I can't be sorry. It's what I want. I want you to focus on me. Just me. I want you to fuck only me."

"Me too," Min croaks, shoving a hand down his body, cringing at his cold fingers. "That's why I -- it wasn't the same. I prefer you. I always preferred you."

Hyung smiles, an unfairly sexy show of teeth and tongue, his arm shifting in telltale motions. "I used to be concerned about that. Now I think, good. That's good. It should be like that." He flicks his bottom lip between his teeth. "I want to hear you."

"You're twenty minutes away," Min complains, stroking himself hard. It's not difficult, what with hyung's face right there, his bare shoulders and crumpled hair. "We could just --"

"You need to sleep," hyung says. "This won't take long."

"Won't it?" Min says, nettled. "I could draw it out."

Hyung grins at him. "You won't."

Min's about to ask why not when the camera tilts again and Min watches him pull his legs up and out, knees carelessly crooked. Watches him uncap a bottle onehanded and squirt it into his palm. Hyung likes thin stuff for stroking himself, too thin to fuck with but slippery, and Min watches a thin drip of white lube, languid and pale, stretch between his fingers and fall to his stomach.

His grip on himself tightens, his knees spreading too, and he extends his spine, the better to lift his hips with the muscles in his thighs and as little of his abdominals as possible. But Min likes that, likes using his thighs for that, likes it when hyung pins a bar across his stomach and forces him to squirm. Likes it too much, and this really won't take long at all. "Were you masturbating before?"

"Yeah. I was thinking about you," hyung says. "Not just the other things. Those are important, but I was thinking, whatever the result of the rest of it, whatever the moral objection, even if you have in the past helped him with his sins, this is important to me. I like this. I like you." There's a helplessness in his voice, a soft hitch, then another. "I like you far too much."

Min's not sure he could ever want anyone else this desperately. Want them at all, in any fashion. Oh, the others -- yes, fine, they're improvements, they're not _terrible,_ not all the time. It's to be determined whether they're a benefit, if the adjustments are good or just a waste of time.

But this. This, hyung's face, how he closes his eyes and relaxes his jaw, how he licks over his lips, his breath gradually louder. The hitching gasp through his nose when he touches his frenulum for the first time in a session, saving it for after warmup so it's not too intense too fast. Hyung likes to take his time with himself. Especially with Min watching.

"Are you paying attention?" hyung asks, dragged and slow, just as Min gets a 10% battery notification.

"I would imprison the entire population to charge my phone," Min says nonsensically, and fumbles for the cord while hyung chuckles. "There. Yes. Yes, I'm watching."

"You're all red," hyung says lazily, with the full effect again of that habit he has of skipping the screen and gazing right at the camera. That hazy look through his lashes goes straight to Min's cock.

His mouth shapes the way it does when he desperately wants to be kissed. He always wants to be kissed when he's close. When he's on his back under Min he clutches at him and arches his neck, making soft, pliant offers of his mouth and shut lashes, just like this. Min badly wants to touch him.

He's magnificent. He's gorgeous and _magnificent._ "I need you."

"I know you do," hyung says, and it's that confidence that has Min squeezing his eyes shut and pulling frantically at the head of his cock. He's not sure anyone's been so certain of him since their mother's murder. So certain of things that Min doesn't know how to say. But hyung knows. Hyung hears him and he knows, and it's a steadiness like holding his hand while he learned to climb stairs.

Hyung knows without Min saying it, and he rolls to his side to save his tired arm, staring at one of the two faces he knows best in the world, watching hyung's mouth twitch, the restless twitch of his eyelids. How he rolls his head, showing a neck Min wants to bite, a vein Min wants to kiss, the rumple of his hair like sex and the way hyung tugs at it sometimes if Min is very good in a very specific way.

"Please," Min begs. "Please come. I want to see." Min closes his eyes when he comes, always has, and he doesn't want to miss this.

Hyung groans. "For you," and after a few moments there it is, the specific tension in his neck, the press of his head back into the pillow, the lift of his chin. How he pulls his lip between his teeth and frowns, making a rough, staccato noise so utterly specific to his orgasm that Min would know it anywhere, anytime.

He's beautiful. Hyung is beautiful and he knows that Min -- he knows. He knows.

Min groans and comes in his hand to the sound of him panting.

"Ah, that was good," hyung says. He sounds pleased. Tired. But pleased in a way that if Min were there would portend being held close and fed sips of wine, the chance to listen to the slow, contented beat of his heart. "Sun-ho?"

Min struggles onto his side, reaching for tissues and wiping his hand. "What?"

"When we have dinner, I want you to fuck me first. Not afterwards. First. When can you leave work early?"

"Tomorrow," Min says. "I told them I was visiting family. I can come to you after I see her."

Hyung's smile is soft. "I do like it when you fuck me."

"Me too," Min says. "Do you -- what I said --"

"Yes. I knew. I know. I need you too." Hyung says it so easily, so steadily. "Do you know that?"

Min curls his hand against his cheek, smelling his own come, wishing it were hyung's. "I want to."

"Okay. See you tomorrow."

"Goodnight," Min says automatically, and hyung hangs up, the screen freezing momentarily on his soft face, his relaxed eyes, the certainty of the way he looks at Min. That certainty.

Min puts the phone on the nightstand and curls up, giddy with terror. Hyung said that. He said that.

But dinner. But he said that. He _said that_ and Min thinks he meant it. He might have meant it. If hyung still wants him by the end of tomorrow, maybe he could try believing it.

 _Hyung thinks he needs me,_ he thinks, and he buries his face in his pillow, disbelieving. There'll be more than enough chances to prove him wrong tomorrow.

But for now -- for now, Min's warm and safe and needed and he doesn't want it to stop.

***

Ja-hee's hospital room is loudly packed with children in a variety of school uniforms, the floor buried in a snowdrift of indistinguishable schoolbags and the sill piled with haphazard stacks of textbooks. He recognises most of the children from Joon-young's pictures and Ja-hee's tales and meeting almost all of them at least once, the oldest a wild-eyed graduate student in the chair beside her bed, hands twisting ceaselessly in his lap and the youngest an infant perched on the bed and amusing Ja-hee by waving a blue plastic toy.

They go quiet in a slow, steady descent of noise, an absence of chatter and smiles like a physical force.

Min's not sure what to do. This isn't a courtroom of hostile faces, but it would be if the chairs were benches. "Good afternoon."

"Hey, hi! Stick around for a minute." She sets about dismissing the children, a process Min stays clear of by attaching himself to an unoccupied bit of wall with his arms folded and his elbows tucked away. He watches them scatter to sort out bags and escape Ja-hee's orders about this piece of homework or that child being picked up or to bring her the baby to kiss one last time or not to be late to school tomorrow or not to forget an appointment.

It's this specific busy, deft whirlwind Min's always found most baffling about parenthood aside from choosing to do it to begin with. How does anyone bother to _remember?_ It's hard enough making sure they bathe often enough their clothing isn't immediately putrid at the armpits.

Ja-hee slumps into the pillows when they've all left. "Ah. Peace."

Min steps over a forgotten plastic frog and sits at her bedside, the seat still warm from the graduate student. "I thought you liked them."

"I love them," she corrects. "I love them, I like them, but I'm so worn out. I hate being sick." She coughs, holding her palm to her stomach, and shuffles her head over to look at him. "I want to ask you something."

"Go on," he says, and curls his fingers carefully beneath his thighs. He thinks he knows what she's going to say. Ja-hee's thoroughly unintelligent, but not so stupid as that.

"How long did it take for you to sell me out?" Her face is tired but her shoulders are squared, her hands flat and tense. "Did you hold out at all?"

"It wasn't my fault."

Ja-hee clicks her tongue, a frustrated noise she used to make whenever Joon-young went on too long for her taste. "I thought you liked me. I mean, maybe not much, but I thought at least a bit. But if you didn't bother holding out at all, then I don't know, maybe you don't."

"It's not that," Min says. "I didn't want to tell him." He doesn't know how to explain. Even to hyung he's never gone into the details. Hyung assumes so much so quickly because he is clever and he knows Min. Ja-hee isn't anywhere near that intellect. "It's easier to show you."

He checks the room and works at his belt, careful of pulling too hard on the skin, and pulls up his shirt.

"Hey, now --"

"Just look," Min says, and he stands up, pushes down his briefs, holding up his trousers and shirt, and shows her the overripe bursts of his bruises.

Her eyes go bright and wobbly, flickering side to side, and her hands curl and her throat works and he knew she wouldn't like it, but she looks hurt for him, somehow. "Oh, Jesus, what did he _do?"_

Min settles his clothes again, zipping and tucking in his shirt, and sits back down, uncomfortable with the way she stares. "You haven't seen that before?"

"No? I guess?" She frowns slowly. "What am I missing?"

"That was the," and he didn't mean for her to be stabbed through with rebar and he didn't mean for her to know. She's not helpful in a hospital bed, but she looks so concerned for him, and he just, it's just that there are things he can't say to hyung. "That was the edge of my kitchen table."

Ja-hee stares, openmouthed. "Did he hit you with it?"

"Not exactly." Min decides any bit of grit under his nails really isn't befitting of his image as a plausible attorney, and he bends his head, swallowing, and methodically works his thumbnails under the others, pinky to index, until every nailbed is clean and sore.

"That bastard," she says once he's finished the eighth nail, sounding somewhere between terrified and furious. "That rat bastard son of a bitch fucked you?"

"It's over now," Min tells his hands. There's a faint smear of grey under his left thumbnail. "I told him I didn't want to and he agreed."

His study is interrupted by Ja-hee grabbing his fingers, squashing them together in her grip, and yanking him half-out of his chair. Even bedridden her eyes snap with the force of will her job requires. "Are you telling me he's been fucking you all this time? Are you fucking kidding me?"

Min shakes his head. "Not when you were there. I thought about it, but I was too young. After I was old enough it started. I wanted to."

"You should've just told him!"

"It wouldn't have helped," Min says, and the truth of it now that it's been said is almost funny. Joon-young was sober. He was angry, but it wasn't the way Ja-hee made him angry back then with the shouting and the slap of a newspaper against her shoulder. With Min he was only angry.

She drags him down into an embrace of the kind she gave the children, her forearms under his armpits and her hands spread across his shoulders, and her hair stinks and her skin smells like tape and Min puts an arm around her. "I'm so sorry, lil bro. I didn't know."

"Why are you sorry?" Min asks her, steadying himself with a knee on the side of the bed when she squeezes. "You had nothing to do with it."

"You could've come to live with me," Ja-hee says. "I totally would've got you out of there. You could've helped me with that mangy florist. I would've taken you with me."

Could have, would have. But she's patting his back clumsily and too hard, like she means it, and he's not sure what to say. "I didn't mind. It was good. I liked it. It's just -- these days."

"Right." She nods against his shirt. "These days you've got a boyfriend?"

"Something like that," he says.

She lets go, looking up at him, tearstreaked and so ferocious it's a wonder Jo Yong-woo didn't just flee the country as soon as he saw her face. A man like that should have known the look of someone determined to murder. "If he ever lays a hand on you again, you tell me. I will kill him. I will fucking kill him."

Min sits down again, straightening his shirt. "You're biased," he says. "You never liked him."

"He never liked me! Fucking know-it-all twatface. Of course I'm fucking biased, look at these actual fucking _children_ he dumped on me," waving her arm at the door. "You saw them, right? Did you want to fuck any of them? Or did you want them to fuck off?"

"You know I've never liked children," Min says.

"Point is, you don't want to fuck them. I'd never think about it either! They're little soft babies and _you_ were a little soft baby and he touched you and I am going to fucking kill him as soon as I'm let out of this fucking bed, so help me God." Ja-hee scrubs her fingernails through her hair, crying out when they tangle. "For fuck's sake."

"Just wait." Min doesn't quite know how to take being called a little soft baby, even in retrospect, but he knows how to brush hair; he spent his teenage years drafted into early-morning preparation for an endless parade of surly children.

He rummages through her toiletries for the brush and finds it and a hairband under a pack of tampons, an ancient disc player, and a novel with the covers worn off, dropping the entire bag back to the floor and shuffling the chair closer to reach.

"Here." He untangles her fingers first and gingerly separates a hank, starting from the end. "I suppose there's no talking you out of holding it against him."

"Nope," she says immediately. "I'm amazed you'd even try, but I guess he got you groomed pretty good before I was around."

"I wasn't groomed," Min says, wrinkling his nose. The idea of _grooming_ as applied to the two of them gives him a bad taste. "It wasn't like that. It was my idea."

"If you got the idea it was because he fucking gave it to you. Don't even start that bullshit with me. How long's it been? I mean, how long did it go for?"

"I don't know if I should tell you," Min says.

Ja-hee knocks her hand against his arm. "I vote for telling me."

"About a decade now," Min says.

"You were a little soft baby and he had no business touching you." Ja-hee snarls, head moving sharply and dragging tangles against his fingers. "Ow. That's exactly the sort of shit my guys are in prison for. You know that, right?"

Min heaves a sigh. "This is why I didn't want to tell you."

"Yeah, why'd you show me?" she asks, knife-sharp.

It's a good question. "I thought you'd be angry. I wasn't sure if you would be angry about it because it was him or because it was me," Min says. It's too honest once he's said it, and he pauses. "You never liked him."

She freezes under his hands, so still her shoulders don't move. He leans around cautiously to find she's closed her eyes, her mouth hanging open like he's hit her. "Look, it's true I have a fucking grudge, but -- okay. That's, okay, that's a little bit fair. Okay." She presses her index fingers between her eyes. "That's fair."

Min waits her out. Ja-hee thinks slowly when she does it on purpose.

"I'm angry because it was you," she says decisively.

He flexes prickling relief out of his fingers and picks up her hair again, pushing the brushed portions back over her shoulder. "Somehow I feel like your real dongsaeng now."

"You always were. You just didn't always want anything to do with me."

Min eyes the twisted snarl on the crown of her head, startled by the bitterness of her tone, her conviction. "You only called me when you were drunk."

"Who the fuck's fault is that? You're the one going round calling me a cunt."

Min has a good memory. An exceptional one, he's been told. He has an absolute memory of his mother's death, of her laugh, of everything in that room. He has a memory of every song he's heard, every street he's ever walked. He can summon a list of capitals faster than the page loads on his phone. He has a mental map of the country accurate to a kilometre and he remembers every touch hyung's ever laid on his skin, now and before. He remembers every day their father came home and went inside to sit with hyung without greeting or looking at him.

He has never called her that.

"That didn't happen," he says, absolutely certain. "Whoever said that was lying to you."

"You're saying the old man lied," tone unleavened and her shoulders curling forward. "That's who said it."

Min interrupts her. "He did?" Joon-young has an opinion of his personality, Min knows that, but he's never heard this.

"Yeah. I called after I left. I called a lot. He told me you were calling me a cunt behind my back. That I was useless and stupid and I'd be better off dead. Said I should stop for my own sake before you used me for practice. So, yeah. I didn't call, and then you moved and I kept getting your number from Eun-bok."

Min doesn't know what to say or how to say it. He's never heard any of this before. He thought establishing tentative contact with Ja-hee was an act of trust on _his_ part. He never thought she would have reason to be wary about it. It never occurred to him. But when he checks her mouth is drawn so far down, like she believed it. Believed Min would rather use her for a messy first kill than talk to her. "You're certain it was him?"

"Dead fucking certain. Why? Was he right?"

"No," Min says. His feet are very far away, his knees barely his. "I thought you were busy. He said you had a new family." He remembers he considered telling Joon-young about her texts at the prison. He considered it and decided against it. He doesn't remember why it didn't seem like a good idea. Why it continued not to be a good idea. There must have been a reason. Was it this?

Ja-hee grabs for his arm again. "Hey, it's true, I do, look at all these fucking kids I've got, but that doesn't mean you're garbage! That's bullshit. You're my dongsaeng forever. Got it?"

Min pulls free and grips her hand, perhaps too tight. He didn't know how much Joon-young hated her, only that he did. "I didn't say that about you. I would swear that under oath."

It occurs to him that this makes her approach in the prison even more inexplicable. "Why did you text me before the interview?"

"I dunno. You didn't look like you'd been telling that criminologist I was a cunt. It was worth a shot." She looks better, brighter. "The shit we find out when we actually talk, huh?"

He looks at their hands. "The children. Do they hear that too?" Is that why they all went so quiet?

She clicks her tongue uncomfortably. "Basically, yeah. I mean, I tell them you're not that bad, but he always says he gets that scary voice from you. The older ones definitely believe it."

"I was lonely," Min says, throat full.

He thought it was Ja-hee Joon-young hated. He thought it was her. Not Min. But none of them ever called back. They called _Joon-young_ back. Not him. For years he wasn't allowed to answer the phone at all, and those years … those years match what Joon-young calls _critical development._ Those years. Both Joon-young's contractors and the others were unacceptable to Joon-young. Was it like that? Was it both?

His work number is part of the Joon-young survival kit. It's always been. He's the person introduced to the albatrosses as _call him if you're arrested, if you need help, if you need bail_. He's that person. But they never called. If being an attorney wasn't for that in the end, then what was it for? Min thought it was what he was for. For the albatrosses. That was why. The money and the albatrosses. Joon-young told him that. If not, then it must be something else. But he always thought -- it doesn't matter what he thought. Not here, with Ja-hee watching him so seriously.

"Hey, I'm really sorry I believed him," she says, putting her other hand over his. "It's fucked and you didn't deserve it. Sorry."

The first time he realised he had hyung as a person to call whenever he wanted, he was giddy with the possibilities. He had to learn to leave personal voicemails after years of business ones. Business voicemails were brusque but hyung liked it better when Min told him something about his life, so he always stood up to look out the floor windows so he could at least say if it was raining or not.

Min wonders what growing up would have been like if they called back. If he'd had someone to call and tell about himself in their absence. If he'd been trusted. Even then, he wasn't trusted. He didn't know.

His chest is too tight. "I missed you," he tells her. "You hugged me when you left."

She puts her arm around him, heedless of yanking the brush from his hand. "Ow. I missed you too, dongsaeng."

"Let me finish your hair." He pauses, wetting his lips. It feels like defiance and truth all at once. "Noona."

"I've wanted you to call me that for a while," she says. "But I didn't think I counted. And the cunt thing." She looks uncertain. It's absolutely wrong for her face and he put it there. He, and Joon-young. Joon-young.

Min pulls the brush slowly through a lock of hair. Someone should wash it. Perhaps there's a basin somewhere he can use. "You count."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had some fantastic comments on the last chapter, I'm so happy! Thank you! I reread what you write all the time, it's a fantastic pick-me-up on my breaks at work. Please, anyone holding back -- if you think I don't want to hear it, I totally do. If you want to talk about the show, feel free! I love talking about this fic and the show and I love all of you. <3
> 
> Please expect the Confrontation/Discussion next chapter!


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. -- Simone Weil_
> 
>  
> 
> Well, here it is! The Confrontation! /whew

Hyung texts Min his room number at nine. Unnecessary since it's the same one and it's been the same this entire visit, but Min can take a hint.

He's barely inside when hyung pushes him back against the door, hands fists in his collar, and kisses him, pressing high on his toes to angle his mouth down against Min's. Min kisses him back, dropping his briefcase in favour of wrapping his arms around him, his back warm through his thin shirt.

"Hi," hyung says. He's smiling, tense around the temples but his hands easy on Min's chest. "Are you hungry?"

"A bit," Min admits. "She didn't want to share her food."

"Of course not, she's recovering," hyung says, taking his hand and tripping over the briefcase. "I asked for entrees."

Min toes it out of the way, more interested in following him. He expected something different from hyung -- being pushed up against the wall and scolded, or being told to sit and eat in silent expectation. He didn't expect hyung to be generous with his touch, to sit beside Min with a cup of coffee and watch him eat, their knees pressed together.

"Should I hurry up?" Min asks him.

"No, eat as much as you want. Anything interesting today?"

Min takes a bite of rice. He can't possibly mean to make it sound like he wouldn't care if Min took all night, and he chews deliberately slowly. "It was just court and meetings. I often take the same cases as certain prosecutors, so we schedule together with the judge to save time."

"Should you really be doing that?" Hyung sounds amused. "Sounds a little like case-fixing."

"Probably we shouldn't. But it's better than being doublebooked." Hyung's knee isn't even jiggling against his, just perfectly still. Hyung is still. "You're not normally patient. I expected you to be asking questions by now."

Hyung tilts his coffee cup. "I would have done that. But I realised our best conversations have been after sex. This way you can fuck me and we can have a good conversation."

"Not the other way around?"

"That way is risky. If my suspicions about the answers to some of my questions are correct, I'm not sure I'll want to touch you, and the same will be true of you for me."

Min didn't expect that. "Do you mean your responses to my answers to your questions?"

"Dinner," hyung says, raising his eyebrows. "This is a dinner conversation. We are not having dinner, you are having an entree before sex. Please finish."

"Can you say you won't be distracted?" Min takes another slow bite. "It's like you said. You have a lot of questions."

Hyung shakes his head. "I am very good at not thinking about things," he says, very wry. "It's the nature of my work. If I am thinking about how a person is shaped a certain way, then I am likely to pay less attention to how they are not. If I am interviewing a criminal and all I am thinking of is 'ah, this person killed a person', they will know I am bothered and treat me like that. This is the same."

Min isn't sure if to be flattered or offended. "Having sex with me is so compelling?"

"It is," hyung says, with an absolute certainty that makes Min blush and stop dragging out his food, eating only until his stomach is settled but not full. Hyung passes him the rest of his coffee and gets up. "I'll start."

Min turns the chair around to watch him, settling back. Hyung's undoing his shirt buttons, focused and concentrated, and Min likes the sight of him, always has. There's nothing wrong with video compared to a phone call, but being able to see him and smell him and feel the way his arms move sharply in the air -- this is the best way to have hyung. "What do you have in mind?"

Hyung smiles at him, an unfairly gorgeous snapshot of white teeth. "I want you to fuck me. Actually," undoing his cuffs and shrugging the shirt open, "I want you to top and decide. Not only fucking me, but topping outright. I want that."

He considers him, holding the mug against his lips, fancying he can taste hyung on the rim. "I don't remember giving permission to take your clothes off."

"Ah. That's right. You didn't." He lets go of his shirt fronts, hands going to his pockets. "Are you sure you agree?"

"Are you?" Min leans forward. "Last time I didn't do well. You tested me and I failed."

Hyung puts his shoulders back. It's amazing to Min that he talks like Min is brave when hyung does things like this so easily. "I think it will be different. I trust you."

Min stares at him, then stares at his body, his shirt crisp white against his skin, the edge of a nipple showing on the right. His polished belt and how it frames his navel. He could. He could ask. "If I wanted to draw you?"

He watches his face carefully. Hyung reddens but doesn't drop his eyes. "I trust you."

"If I wanted to draw how you look when you're being fucked?"

That gets him a cleared throat and a shiver running through that straight frame. "I trust you."

Min sits back and reaches for the hotel stationery, testing three pens before he finds one reliable. He doesn't know how far hyung will let him go. How far hyung wants to go. But Min finds he wants to. He wants to know if hyung will like it, if he would keep the sketches. "Undo your fly. Slowly. Drop your hands afterwards."

He starts with the general lines of his body, the heavy definition of his pectorals and abdomen, his painfully correct posture. The drape of his shirt and the creases around his hips and the waistband of his boxers, the open, offering splay of his fly echoing the relaxed curl of his fingers and the breadth of his knuckles. His sturdy thighs in those trousers, his socked feet. From there his face is the easiest thing in the world -- hyung, his hyung, there in front of him, offering himself to Min's eyes with confidence and not a quiver of his lashes.

Min hesitates when it's finished. Should he? Is it good enough?

But he knows already that there will be no picture good enough, and he tears the page carefully and holds it out, his heart in his throat.

Hyung takes it, turning it the right way round, and Min sips coffee gone cold and bitter and watches his face, how his eyebrows furrow and clear and furrow again, the slight part of his mouth.

"Is this how you see me?"

"I wouldn't draw it if it wasn't," Min says. "Do you like it?"

Hyung nods, eyes tracing up and down. "I know I look good, but… not this good." He smiles over the paper at Min. "You make me beautiful. Is that the right word for your perspective?"

"Yes. You are." Min nervously caps the pen, uncaps it, caps it again. "From an artistic view."

"And your personal view?" hyung asks. He's smiling, the crooked one that appears when he's distracted enough to be self-conscious of the tooth his foster mother must've paid to have fixed. When they were children he never smiled broadly on that side. "Am I beautiful in your eyes?"

"Always," Min says, and holds out his hand. "Give it back. Take off your trousers."

"I want to keep it," hyung says, handing it over. "Don't put it near the plates."

"Trousers," Min says, and smooths a fresh page with his palm. "Slowly."

Hyung hooks his thumbs into the sides and pulls them down, watching Min, and Min swallows at the black hem of his underwear shaping his upper thighs, palming himself carefully at the way they hitch up at the inside seam like a guide for where best to put his mouth.

Min's not hard, not yet, but he could be. He really could be, and he presses down harder, liking the shape of his own cock, liking that hyung is watching him too. "Go on. Socks too."

"You're not drawing," hyung says.

"Turn around when you're finished," Min says. Hyung kicks his clothes away and turns around, bending his head, and the spread of his nape above the sag of his collar gives Min an idea. "Pull down your shirt. To your elbows."

"Like this?" hyung asks, shrugging his shoulders, his elbows bent against his sides, the right side's sleeve catching high on his tricep. The uneven crumple of it against his back makes Min's mouth dry out.

"Hold it there," Min says, and sips coffee to stave off his voice cracking. He ignores the taste in favour of drawing the light on his skin, the folds of his shirt and the breadth of his back. How it rucks up in his lumbar curve and shows his arse, boxer briefs a black cling of contrast. The nape of hyung's neck, the column of it sloping into hyung's exposed shoulders. He takes a particular pleasure in sketching his legs, his rounded calves. He details the vulnerable shells of his ears. "I finished another one."

Hyung turns, shirt still around his arms, framing his torso in a way so unfairly gorgeous Min wants to tell him to stop there so he can start another. He doesn't, only holds his breath as he approaches and leans over.

Min reaches for the decanter, pours himself a measure of wine with a hand he tries to steady. Hyung's so close he can smell the faded drydown of his cologne on his neck. He's never allowed Min to sketch him before. "What do you think?"

"I think if I saw that out of context I would want to fuck me," hyung says. He sounds incredulous but his face is pleased, his cheeks pink. "You make me look so -- I knew you wanted me, but I didn't think -- I'm glad we're doing this. I'm glad."

Min reaches for his underwear, finds him half-hard when he presses his fingers through the fabric. "You like it when I watch you."

"I do," hyung says, pushing against his palm. "I always do. Do you want to watch me?"

Min has to clear his throat a few times at that. "Yes." He considers hyung's body, the curious interest on his face, and catches a chair with his foot to drag it over. "Bend over with your back to me. Elbows on the seat."

"You're really going to draw that?" Hyung's cock is thicker against his hand now, fuller.

"Can I?" Min asks him, meaning it as a challenge but it comes out too soft, too hopeful. He tries again. "I want to draw you."

"I trust you," hyung says, and he takes the chair and bends over and obeys. He looks good like that, clothes a mess, his back an arch of smooth skin. "What next?"

"Underwear. From the back, one hand. Until I tell you to stop." He rubs his cock, watching. Hyung is gorgeous, too gorgeous, and from all appearances utterly willing, and Min wants to be careful even as he idly wonders what it might be like if he told hyung to fuck himself, if he told hyung to come to him and let Min bite him, if he told him to let Min tie his wrists together and fuck him. If he'd refuse. If he'd say yes and mean it.

Hyun eases a thumb in the waist of his underwear, dragging them down in a slow accumulation of creases. Min watches them stretch over his arse, digging in at the sides, watches the fabric gather and draw at the underside of his thighs and that freshly obscene curve.

Min watches him shudder, a ripple from his knees. Watches him shift his feet and plant his elbows, watches the shirt pull across his back and frame the heave of his ribs, and he draws him like that, draws him as though -- as though he were ready. Ready for Min, waiting for him. Draws his round thighs and that bite of elastic and the straining shirt, the makeshift restraint of how awkwardly his elbows are placed, how the tension draws up a toothsome arc of flesh on his back.

"I'm done," Min says eventually, and he doesn't want his cock out but he unzips at least, fumbles to press on the head just to give himself some room. "Come and see it."

Hyung wanders over to him, steps shortened by the underwear, and his cock is half-visible in the low rise, thick and pinked. Min reaches to brush his fingers against it. "Stop that, I'm looking." His face is red, his nipples small and dark. "You really think I'm sexy. You see me this way. You want to fuck me."

Min nods, reaches for his hip, and he -- the tests came back fine. He can do this. He pushes firmly and hyung turns, lets him spread his hand over his cheek and squeeze. "I want to fuck you." His fingers wander, brushing between, and hyung makes a soft noise, then another as Min's fingers suddenly slide. "What is this?"

"I really want you to fuck me too," hyung says. "So I prepared."

"Show me," Min says. It feels daring, to ask for such a thing with hyung's arse so close to his face. "Show me."

Hyung's breaths are noisy, uneven, his back tensing. "Yeah. Yeah, okay." He reaches back with both hands, fingertips working into the crossroads of his thighs, and spreads his cheeks apart, showing Min the deep, slick glisten of lube, the swollen roundness. It's a little open, centered dark, and Min inhales arousal. "Do you like it?"

"Do you have --" He doesn't know how to ask. "You had a dam."

Hyung doesn't move. "Do you want to?"

"Yes," Min says fervently. He's not sure he wants anything more, in this moment, than to put his mouth there and feel how much hyung likes it.

"I like rimming," hyung says, walking to his bedside and rummaging. "But you've never shown interest. I gathered it was a turn-off."

"Usually it is," Min admits. "I'm not interested in faeces. But --"

"I washed," hyung interrupts. "I've washed, I've done an enema kit, I fucked myself --"

"Did you," Min says, and he pulls his cock out, unable to resist stroking himself any longer. The thought of hyung fucking himself for him is just -- it's -- "Did you use your fingers?"

"Yes." Hyung brings back the dam, one of those filmy squares, and turns in front of him again, taking a deep breath and spreading his cheeks apart. "I used three. I wanted four, but it took too much time."

"I can give you four," Min promises, watching hyung's thighs tense and his fingers flex, and he settles the dam along the crease, handing the edges to hyung for him to hold down. It leaves a little slack in the latex but he remembers how good each new stretch felt on hyung's tongue. "When I want to give them."

"I trust you," hyung says again. Min leans forward and nuzzles into his arse, his mouth brushing up and down, tasting plastic and smelling him. He drops a kiss to the rim, pleased how strong it feels against his mouth, intrigued by the strange softness of the body around it, fat and glutes and the deeply intimate anatomy of his perineum.

He draws the seams of his body with his tongue from his coccyx,  through the depth of his intergluteal cleft to kiss his anus and thence lick along the long scar-like line of his raphe, perianal to scrotal, crossing the edge of the dam until Min tastes only skin and sweat and the vulnerable, welcome weight of his testicles in his mouth. Hyung lets go abruptly on one side to clamp his hand to the table, his back curving. "Please, Sun-ho, I --"

"Put your hand back," Min says, drawing away from the stick of the dam to his cheek.

It takes a few moments, a few breaths, but hyung stands again and puts his hand back on his arse, catching the dam and spreading again. "Do that again." He sounds unsteady. "Please."

Min sets to it. He remembers how it felt when hyung spread his tongue and licked flat swathes everywhere, how it felt when he sucked at the skin beneath and pressed his tongue there. He remembers hyung's kisses, open-mouthed and wet and noisy, remembers shaking, sweating, the way hyung is shaking and sweating. He remembers hyung putting his tongue inside, pushing in and licking, inside to outside and around until he couldn't help but rock back for more.

His tongue protests with the beginning of a cramp at the root and Min keeps going, hearing him cry out, feeling his thighs tremble under his grip, how he leans back into Min's mouth with the pained noises that usually mean he's about to come. Min's tongue folds on itself, forces him to just kiss him, to thrust it aggressively and bluntly against his rim, into that space hyung worked open for him. Min wonders if he can make him come like this, holding himself open for Min's mouth and being fucked by Min's tongue. "Show me how close you are."

"I'll fall over," hyung says, a very faint whisper. He's gasping.

"Then stay like that," Min tells him, and picks up the pen and goes around him, dragging a chair along, and for a moment just -- admires him. Hyung is beautiful. He's so beautiful, and he says he needs Min. It's Min he needs. He's beautiful.

"You're impossible. You want to draw this?" Hyung shivers. "I -- can I at least balance?"

"If you need to," Min says, raising an eyebrow. "If you can't keep your hands where they are."

Hyung swallows and stays still and Min begins to sketch him, his cock stiff and red, jutting and trapped, balls drawn tight, a sheen of sweat on his neck that trails onto his gleaming sternum. He's red-cheeked and flushed, the shirt a twisted soak of fabric with folds showing translucent in the crooks of his elbows. His shoulders forced back by his own grip on his arse and his chin tilted up, his mouth parted and eyes narrowed, pelvis tipped. He looks fucked, pornographic, gorgeous.

"Do you know what you look like?" Min asks him.

"I'm about to," hyung answers. His voice is rough. "Right?"

"You are." Min finishes sketching the roundness of his lips and the heavy arch of his torso and takes the picture to him, turning the notepad around to hold it in his face. "Do you like it?"

"Oh, God," hyung whispers, eyes fixed on the sketch, swallowing. "I've seen a lot of filthy things, but that's --"

"Do you like it?" Min presses. "Would you keep it?"

Hyung makes a shaky noise. "I'll keep it forever. Of course I will. Please. Please touch me."

"Can you come from rimming?" Min asks him, capping the pen.

"Yes, but I wasn't joking about my balance."

Min drops the pad and pen to the floor and grabs for his waist, finding him sticky-slick with sweat, his pulse a frantic, enormous thrum beneath the skin. Hyung looks a little better bent over the chair Min's just abandoned, knee up and his head on the backrest, and Min pushes his fingers through the damp hair at the nape of his neck. "Hold still."

"I'll try," hyung says. "I trust you." It sounds ragged now, breaths close to sobbing, but the confidence in it is unwavering.

Min goes to his knees, feeling -- it's a fall, of course, a controlled one, but it's also such a powerful feeling that goes to his his fingertips to have hyung like this, clothes wrecked, kneeling for Min's mouth, holding himself open for him. So desperate for it that he begged, and Min takes pity on him, a happy, uncomplicated pity of believing he means it when he says _I trust you,_ and sets about getting him off, clawing welts into the undersides of his thighs and the backs of his knees, biting the curve of his cheek where it meets his thigh, slow and deep and scraping.

It takes a while longer, Min having to stop and flex his tongue to work out more budding cramps while he rubs his finger over his rim just to feel him shake, works his thumb into the humid space behind his balls. A while isn't forever, isn't anywhere close to it, and soon hyung's white-knuckled, one of his hands gone from his arse to grab at Min's hair, making low, rolling moans as he grinds back, hips stuttering and forceful and the air around them draped in short, shocked English blasphemies.

Hyung weeps as he comes, thick sobs that drip out of him like his come, and it takes a long time for him to stop rocking his hips against Min's face, for him to relax his hand and let go. He sags immediately, both hands going to the back of the chair. "Water. Please."

Min stands up, unsure what to do with himself now that it's apparently over, walking on uncertain knees as he fetches water and brings it to hyung for him to drink. This time he's the one holding up the glass, has to help him with the first glassful and some of the second.

It's a relief when hyung wipes his mouth and takes it from him. "You're still dressed. After all that, you're still dressed. Incredible." He's smiling, wrecked and unabashed, and the sight of him makes Min's stomach strange with satisfaction. "Did you want to fuck me?"

Min wants to very, very badly. He starts to undress, yanking at his tie and working his feet out of his shoes. "Yes."

"Not here. We'll break the chair." Hyung tugs the dam out of his arse and folds it, tottering on his feet. "Come fuck me."

He's still in his trousers. "Let me finish."

Hyung makes an agreeable noise, heaving himself onto the bed. "When you're ready."

He keeps condoms and lubricant in the side table as always, and Min goes naked to search the top drawer, liking hyung's eyes on him. He likes it even more when Min pulls his underwear down around his ankles and he lifts his hips obediently, makes a shocked sort of noise when Min pushes into him. "Ah! Ah, slowly."

"I can be slow," Min says, and sets about proving it with a hand on his back and the tip of his cock nudging him open, excruciatingly wonderful millimetre by millimetre, until hyung's grabbing at his thigh and urging him on. "Oh, that's right. You asked for four fingers."

"Sun- _ho."_ Hyung's laughing, bright and warm. "Stop drawing it out and fuck me."

"I also remember," Min says, "speaking of drawing. I wanted to draw you being fucked."

The laughter turns to a sharp, indrawn breath. "I trust you." It sounds less confident now, but hyung's hand is firm when he grips Min's thigh. "I trust you."

"Turn over," Min says, and pulls out, guarding the condom with two fingers, to find the pad and pen again.

"I don't know why I'm not doing this but I know why I _am_ ," hyung mumbles, his arm draped so attractively over his forehead that Min has to stop just to look at him, enraptured. "I don't think anyone's ever looked at me the way you do."

"I draw what I see," Min says, coming to kneel between his thighs, and this of all things makes a florid blush spread over hyung's throat. He reaches for a spare pillow. "Shift up."

It's only a little work to get back inside him, hyung's hips perched on Min's thighs, a pillow folded in the small of his back. "Are you really going to draw me like this?"

Min flips to a page in the middle, careful of the topmost image and the damp sweat on his body. "Of course." He sets it neatly on his belly and starts to sketch.

Hyung's grinning, stretched out and lax, his arms still pleasantly akimbo and radiating contentment. It's the specific look he gets when he's post-coital and only thinking about one thing at a time, and Min sketches his grin, his neck, the splay of his arms and legs. He sketches hyung's softening cock on his belly, the warm thickness of his muscles, himself as an empty space between his spread thighs but for a pair of brief lines. This is an image of hyung, after all, and Min makes sure to be faithful to the way he looks when he's happy because of sex, worn out and satisfied.

"Here."

Looking at it makes hyung blush again, that same lopsided grin. "I look so thrilled with myself."

"Aren't you?" Min asks him, capping the pen and throwing it to the floor. He has no intention of making more sketches tonight.

"True, I am," hyung says, putting the notepad to the side, his hands finding Min's knees and rubbing them. "I am. Come on." Min lifts him higher and rolls his knees forward, pushing him up and stuffing the pillow under his hips. He reaches between them for his cock and slowly pushes inside him, their bodies pressed together and hyung digging his heels into his arse. Min kisses him, kisses that happy sigh like hyung is a map and Min is lost, and hyung moans under him, wrapping an arm around him, pulling him up. "Fuck me."

"You said slowly," Min reminds him, and rolls his hips, careful and shallow, working himself into coming. Hyung's soft noises under him, the soft eyes, the soft smile, only remind him that this means the end of sex and the beginning of the conversation Min promised they would have.

Hyung wraps his other arm around him, fingertips clawing at his hip. "Not this slow. Come on," his mouth coaxing against Min's.

Min shuts his eyes and kisses him, picks up speed in short thrusts that make hyung's teeth rattle against Min's ear and his mouth make helpless _please kiss me_ shapes that Min does his best to satisfy. He comes in him, hyung's heels bouncing on his hips and his mouth open and slick against Min's.

Min goes to his elbows on top of him, catching his breath, and hyung strokes up his back, palm settling between his shoulders.

"I needed that. I needed you." Hyung wipes Min's forehead with the heel of his palm and Min opens his eyes to find him smiling so hard his cheeks push at his eyelids, sweat gleaming on his chin and beaded in his hair.

"Me too," Min says, and manages to draw back and out and sit on his heels. He feels wrung, his mouth and tongue sore. Wrung and pleased and as though hyung meant it when he said _I trust you,_ might have meant it every time he said it. It's almost enough to stave off the dread of what hyung will want to know. "About dinner. Did you order room service?"

"Yeah. I told them to wait until I called for it, though. I didn't want us to be interrupted."

Min watches him roll awkwardly across the bed and gets out of the way. "I'll shower first." He picks up the notepad on his way, puts it on the nightstand and washes off the sweat and sex, tries to prepare himself for whatever it is hyung wants.

He's lied a lot. He's not a bad liar. Not the best, not like Joon-young, but not bad, and the main subject of his lies has been Joon-young. Joon-young, who hyung now knows as a specific person. An alive person, who Min was, but is no longer, fucking.

When he gets out of the shower and gets into one of the ridiculously cosy bathrobes it feels like they fucked hours ago and not just ten minutes past, the chair they used wiped clean and back against the wall.

Hyung has his sketches lined up on the table, sitting in his briefs and his head on his chin. Even the last two have been neatly torn out and set in place, and he smiles over at Min like it's a conversation interrupted and not a new one. "The sexiest part is knowing you really do see me this way. You see me like this. This person."

It's his favourite thing about hyung, sometimes, the way he talks to Min like they've been talking all along. He sits next to him, eyeing the sketches critically. Not too awful, but not his best. His first art teacher would say something sharp about the angle of hyung's calf in the third and he would be right.

"I thought I would end today being angry at you, but if I keep these here it will be easier to remember you are someone I trust like this. Because I did trust you but also because… I talked to my foster mother the other day. I told her about you, obliquely. She told me not to ruin your life. It's true, isn't it?"

Hyung looks over at him, his bare shoulder lovely, dotted with a freckled spray of scars from a frying pan. He cried when the oil splashed but silently, because their father was sleeping.

"I could ruin you. These could ruin you."

Min considers the pictures. Homosexual pornography. Hyung is so handsome that homosexual pornographic propaganda is the more accurate term. "It's true. I would never work as an attorney again."

Hyung scratches his sternum and gets up. "Leave them out. I want the reminder."

"Of what?" Min challenges to his back, rising as the door sounds.

"That I trust you," hyung says, and shuts the door.

Min sighs, gathers the pages face down and stuffs them into the notepad. Leaving them isn't the same as being foolish.

He answers to the same spy as before, and she gives his wet hair a very obvious once-over. He wouldn't ask if Ja-hee hadn't mentioned it but now it's all he can see in her body language. "Were you told I was dangerous?"

She eyes him. "Of course you're dangerous. Don't come near me."

"You should know I don't act without a reason," Min says, his hands in his pockets as he watches her set out food.

"Helpful. Stay away from me," she snaps. "You got Eun-bok drunk. It's been horrible."

"Vomiting, or…?"

"He wouldn't let me call him in sick." She glares. "I don't get you and I don't want to."

"That's fine. You can tell both of them I'm up to nothing special," Min says, trying to place how she'd know Eun-bok so well. "Are you dating one of his flatmates?"

"I work in the same warehouse as Ji-hoon. Would you just back off?"

Min studies her, hands in his warm terrycloth pockets. "You are afraid of me."

"Yes! Leave me alone." She sets out the rest of the food, wipes her hands on her skirt, and wheels the trolley out with a scowl.

He watches her go and locks the door behind her, then sets out the sketches again to the side in a progression he can admit is lovely. It's lovely because hyung is. _I trust you_ , he remembers, and he's not sure what to do with that.

In one way, these sketches are handing over his career. In another way, they are hyung handing over his. Min hasn't hidden his identity. He's even marked the mole on his cheek in a couple of them. Mutual destruction or mutual protection.

"You're bracing for a fight," hyung says, and Min looks up to find him out of the shower in the other robe, wrapped tightly around him and belted just as tight. "I don't want this to be more adversarial than necessary."

"There will be things I can't --"

"I know that," hyung breaks in, and he sits down. "I realise. If you cannot say so, then tell me you cannot say. If it is about that catastrophic objection, say so. If you can say anything, then say it. If you don't know, tell me that too. This is the only way this conversation will work."

Min sits opposite him and pours wine, hyung's favoured red. "That system relies on trust. Isn't that a flaw?"

"I do trust you," hyung says, gesturing to the sketches. His lips twitch down. "Or is it only possible in bed?"

He would like to say yes. He would like to say he is untrustworthy, that he will lie to him. He would like to say he will only ever speak falsehoods and misdirection and lead him astray. He would like to say there are other, more important things, than hyung's wishes. "It's not."

"All right." Hyung serves him first, forking meat onto his plate. "You are confirming my suspicions about your uncle were correct to begin with. That he is a certain person."

"Yes," Min says. "I am. But it is not enough for a court case or conviction. You have no evidence," Min says. "A sketch, a couple of pictures. Hardly anything."

"You did that deliberately. It's enough for me and you know it." He serves himself, layering strips on his plate while Min carefully pours sauce. "And his false identity?"

"You have no proof of falsehood. Medical examiner Lee Joon-ho is a respected, established man with friends and connections. It would not be easy."

"The part I have trouble with is the extent of your dishonesty." Hyung sits back, his cutlery untouched. "All this time you knew. I begged you. I _begged._ The things I -- and you knew." His mouth forms fluid, uncertain shapes. "The paintings were his attempt to point to you. Correct?"

"I think they were attempts to make you interested," Min says. "The why of that is related to the catastrophic objection."

"So you can't comfortably tell me more about that. Fine. The signature on your palette?"

Min smiles briefly. "I have had more contact with your brother than I led you to believe."

Hyung nods slowly, grim-faced, the shape of his eyes sad. "You spent your childhood with Lee Joon-young. You spent your entire adult life with him. If it is true that he did take Min, it stands to reason. Can you tell me where my brother is?"

"That," Min says carefully, "is related to the catastrophic moral objection."

"What is this catastrophic objection worth that you would lie to me in these specific ways? I've been desperate for any information about him and you knew that. I haven't hidden my preference. I would have been glad if you told me. But you kept it from me. Why?"

"The catastrophic objection is worth everything. To me."

Hyung's smile is a painful stretch across his face, and he gathers the pictures in his hands, shuffles and neatens the stack. "You don't make any sense, Sun-ho."

"I am trying not to lie to you," Min says.

"At least tell me what you didn't do." Hyung sips wine, eyes fixed on Min's face. "Did you kill him? Did you sell him?"

"No," Min says. He uncurls his fists, reminds himself that hyung still seems to believe Jung Sun-ho is a different person to Lee Min. Still, but barely. Barely. "No. Min is alive. I can't say he is unmolested by your standards, but he is alive."

"What does that mean?"

Min makes a dry sort of noise, trying not to laugh. "You expect my uncle to keep his hands to himself?"

"I expect you," hyung says fiercely, "not to play games. Be direct. Be truthful. Did someone hurt him?"

"Yes." He looks at his hands, his nails still clean. He thinks about the car, about Joon-young's cock in his mouth. Thinks about Ja-hee's version of events. Which came first, Joon-young or sex? "Yes, someone hurt him."

"Is he in Korea?"

This is easy and nonspecific enough. "Yes."

"Do I know him?"

"I don't know everyone you know," Min says, and sighs when hyung only grits his teeth and refuses to blink. "He is in this city."

"Are you in contact with him?"

"Yes."

"If I stole your phone, if I asked for your records, would I find him?"

This is also easy. "No."

Hyung frowns and turns the stacked drawings face down. He links his fingers under his chin, staring at Min like he he thinks he's keeping secrets now of all times. "What are you not telling me?" he murmurs, very soft like he's talking to himself. "You aren't telling me something, and it's important. It's important enough that you're avoiding it entirely. But what is it?"

"Eat while you think," Min says. "You might as well."

Hyung nods and starts to eat, picking at his food with the dark, concentrated frown Min associates with thorny puzzles like making their father move from the couch to his bed without waking him up, or scrubbing blood off the floor with methylated spirits while their father cried after the funeral. "One more," hyung says. "Why is the catastrophic moral objection worth this?"

He might as well ask what he gave up Joon-young for. He might as well as why Min did all this to begin with. He might as well ask why Min likes to kiss him, why Min marking a file complete in the department intranet. He might as well ask why Min likes sex or breathing or lapsang souchong. He might as well ask the true breadth and scope of everything Min feels for him.

He is asking exactly that.

"I love you. Jung Sun-ho loves you, David Lee Hyun. I want to keep that. I want that."

"And I meant it when I said I would look at you objectively if you told me," hyung says. He glances at the stack of drawings, turns them face-up. The topmost is the last one, the one Min drew while he was inside him, and hyung jerks back, licking his lips, something worried and sad around his eyes.

"I don't want you to look at me objectively." Min swallows a bite of food without tasting it. "I want you to look at me subjectively, just like --" He puts down his chopsticks and gestures to the sketches. "I want you to keep looking at me like that. If you know then your subjectivity will change. You will look at me objectively to keep your distance. I don't want your distance. I hate it when we are distant. I want --"

His mouth dries.

He breathes. He takes a risk. A risk like the fourth drawing still face-up on the table.

"I want this," Min says, still cautious, and he reaches for hyung's hand. Hyung always, always reaches for him. Min isn't sure he's ever reached for him first, and he curls his fingers around the back of his hand, his thumb over the grooved warmth of his knuckles. "Just this."

"You are keeping my brother from me," hyung says. He sounds as careful as Min. "You are keeping him from me to protect yourself. To protect our relationship."

Min can't smile. His single bite of food feels too rich, too much, lingering and choking. "Yes."

"Do I have to decide what I want more? You or my brother Lee Min?"

Easy again, but so painful Min can't look at him, can only look at the way hyung turns the drawing facedown again and pushes the pile away. Min's not sure he's aware he's doing it. "Yes."

"I don't think I've said this before. I love you too, Jung Sun-ho." He sighs. "But if it is a choice between my relationship and my brother, I will choose my brother. I will choose Min. I will always choose him."

It stings to be loved and rejected and loved in the same breath, and Min tries to smile, tries to be glad that at least hyung hasn't taken his hand away. "How noble. How much of him do you need? If I put you in contact, how much would you want?"

"Everything he'll give me," hyung says immediately.

Min wishes he meant that the way Min so fervently wants to take it. Every answer hyung gives him is an invitation to call him hyung. Every question is a beckon: _tell me who you are._ Every flicker of his eyes on his face as though Jung Sun-ho is a stranger is a plea to tell a truth. A singular truth. The truth.

Hyung squeezes his hand, not gently. "Is contact something in your power?"

"Yes," Min says.

"All along," hyung says, not quite a question. "All along, you could have -- you knew who I was and all along you could have -- is that correct?"

"Yes."

Hyung scoffs. "Why didn't you tell me? Why --" He blinks too fast. "Why didn't you tell me? You could have said. I would have followed you anywhere. Why did you take me home instead?" He lifts Min's lax hand in his. "Why this?"

"This is what I wanted," Min says. "I wanted to know if you were like my uncle said. If you gave him away. If you forgot about him. I wanted to know who you were now."

"Did you like what found?" hyung asks. His voice is soft, his eyes on the sketches. His hand tender in Min's, his grip gentle like if he isn't careful he will crush him. "Whatever it was."

"Yes," Min says. "I did." He clears his throat. "I liked you."

"And I haven't had any contact from my brother Lee Min because -- why?"

"Because I like you. Because I want to keep you. Because I didn't know who you would prefer."

"I have to choose," hyung says. "Because of the catastrophic objection."

Min's throat still hurts, his lips dry and sticky. "Yes."

"I refuse. It is a false choice. I refuse. What can --" He shakes his head. "You have not killed him, correct? The identity exists. You have not killed anyone, legally or otherwise?"

"Not him," Min says.

Hyung starts, his grip briefly crushing. "I suspected. I didn't realise." He rubs his mouth, holds Min's hand to his lips. "You have not killed him," he says against Min's fingers. " You are guilty of hiding him. You are guilty of deceit. But I knew this already, so -- what is so bad?"

"That is the cata--"

"Catastrophic objection," hyung breaks in. "Fine. But Min is well? He's not sick? He remembers me?"

"Min remembers." Min thinks about the bags under his own eyes, the weariness of balancing anywhere but his own centre of gravity. "He doesn't sleep enough, but he's fine."

"That's good. That's something." Hyung exhales and shuts his eyes, pressing his lips to Min's knuckles. "Can you tell me why this catastrophic objection is so catastrophic?"

For a moment, Min is tempted. But hyung's lashes sparkle, rimmed wet, and there's denial in the downturn of his mouth, and Min can't do it. He just … can't do it. "You'll have to figure it out."

Hyung nods. "What can you tell me? To help me."

"You have a sense of yourself," Min says, "as a good person."

It's the difference between them. Hyung might flirt with the idea of _is it in my genes, is it me,_ but he wouldn't, really. He wouldn't do it the way Joon-young would do it, or Min would. Min knows himself well enough. He still doesn't regret that bright splash when he was a child, that final silencing of aggravating perfection. Hyung would regret it. He is someone who feels guilt.

"You have a sense of yourself as an unworthy person," hyung says. He reaches for the drawings, spreads them out and orders them chronologically. "Do you think this objection will make you unworthy of me?"

Min smiles, brief and thin. "I know it will."

"You don't make sense," hyung says again. "You say you're in close contact, but you don't contact him and I've never seen that anyone lives at your house or stays with you for extended periods. You've never had anyone specific in your call background and even your uncle does not know about this," raising their joined hands, "but he knows about me. How do you meet? Is he a fellow attorney?"

"I just … have," Min says. The longer he watches hyung circle and drive himself into a corner, the more he feels a strangeness. The longer he watches him pretend, the more he wants to shake his shoulders and peel his eyelids from his face with scalpels so he will stop avoiding the pictures. The evidence. "Lee Min is an attorney. But there are fifteen thousand of us. You will need more information."

"Min, an attorney?" Hyung smiles, pleased, gathering the pictures and turning them over in a messy fan, and Min wonders if he would always be pleased. If not Joon-young, if not their mother, if he would have approved then too. "Like you?"

"Yes. Like me. Just like me." It's pity, he realises. He pities hyung for trying so very hard and so very desperately.

Hyung is smarter than this, and Min is sure they both know it.

"What do you want out of having him?" Min asks. "Lee Min. What would you gain?"

"My brother," hyung says immediately, his free hand still on the papers. "I've missed him. I thought he was dead for so long. I thought I was alone."

Hyung has no idea what being alone feels like, Min can tell. If he did he wouldn't say it like this, with this effort as though it is serious and not a scream of desperation. Min would have screamed before he left Ja-hee for the night if she hadn't told him the nurses would be bothered and it might affect her care. He didn't want to that badly, not with the septic risk. But he still wants to. He always wants to, a little. "And?"

"And what?" Hyung is straight-shouldered, straight-necked, straight-forward. "I want my brother back. Lee Joon-young took him and I want him back."

Min moves his wineglass away from his plate, shifts it to rest his elbows on the tablecloth. It breaks their handhold, leaves his palm cold, and he tucks his fingers against his neck, thumb resting where Joon-young's printed its shape.

However much he wants to tell him just for the temptation of it, to shake him, to rattle him, to _force_ him, he shouldn't -- he can't -- he shouldn't. He can only watch hyung take the pictures in both hands and neaten them, tap the edges carefully on all four sides, as though it makes up for the way he doesn't look at at them at all, as though they are everything they're not.

"Your moral objection would lose you Jung Sun-ho. It's up to you," Min says, "who you want more. I told you that."

Hyung's jaw flexes. His fingers are stiff. "I'll ask you. Since you have appointed yourself the gatekeeper. Who do you want me to have?"

"Jung Sun-ho," Min answers. It's an easy answer, for all that he spent years agonising. Here is hyung asking him and now that he is asking, Min could have said _Lee Min_ and let that be the end of it. He could have said _Lee Min_ from the beginning -- perhaps should have. Should have gone to that bar and curled his hand around his elbow and whispered _hyung, it's me._

But he didn't, and hyung didn't ask, and here they are. Hyung is asking and Jung Sun-ho might be stolen but the name is Min's the way his sketches reflect their mother's delight in framed musculoskeletal studies of abnormal physiologies, conjoined twins and skeletal deformities. Min remembers their father used to have them professionally wrapped and write notes to her in the blank square of cardstock hanging amidst stripped ribbons -- _what was the condition of this one? Tell me when I get home!_ She would hold the frame in the air and peer through her glasses, Min on her lap and hyung beside her, telling them about nerves and the importance of posture, the marvel of fucked-up Latin that was a name for a specific malformation of the abdominal cavity. He's not sure now what her job was -- something in medical documentation, a fellow pea in their father's academic pod of fountain pens and acronymic notes on yellow papers.

"Are you sure?" hyung asks.

Hyung doesn't know who taught him the areas of the brain, who taught him to draw the cerebellum first, but Min does. They both learned from her in those brightly-lit afternoons and Min doesn't want to be her son in hyung's eyes. Min could have said _Lee Min_ but that child is a remnant of a dead woman, their mother the first murdered millstone around hyung's neck. Lee Min is hyung's brother, but what else is there to that person than their mother's lap and their father's avoidance and hyung's hands in his wet hair?

Jung Sun-ho, on the other hand, is a name he stole, claimed, and lived in like a shell until it became his skin. He answers to it and lives as it and it is the name hyung says when he masturbates on the phone. He could learn to think of himself as Sun-ho, given incentive. "Yes. I like this person."

"I do too," hyung says. He puts the drawings face down and presses on his eyelids and Min knows he knows. Min can see it in his face. He's trapped himself in a logical corner of observation and perception, and there is one answer left and it's the one answer he doesn't want. "I like him very much. But you say it is a choice, and my priority is my brother."

Min's priorities are different and this approach might not be the best one. This is an approach to take with someone who thinks they are cleverer than he is, not -- someone who is. Someone he wants to like him afterwards. He tries a different tack. "Perhaps it's not your choice. Perhaps it's mine." Min toys with the stem of his wineglass. "Perhaps I decide not to give you Lee Min. Perhaps I decide Jung Sun-ho is what you get."

"It would be your right. That decision would be your right. I suspect I wouldn't like any of the results, but it is your decision." He's very quiet, very fixed. There's a look to him, a poise. About to run, about to snatch the glass away from him, about to rise to his feet and say -- Min doesn't know what he would say. It's a look like running, running, running. His feet splashing in blood and hyung unresponsive on the floor. "If you're willing to make it."

When he was a child, he understood selfishness as their father stealing hyung away. These days he understands it as the sound of Joon-young's voice. Min is an ambitious person; to be ambitious and to be selfish are hand in hand. He understands that much. Is it ambition, to want hyung for himself? Is it selfishness to say this? Is it selfish to want to resolve these two things, this child he was and the adult he's become, into one person?

Is it selfish to pass the decision, to hold out his hands, his self, his -- everything, and say _you choose?_

Of course it is selfish.

Hyung knows. If hyung weren't with Min, he could be alone with the knowing. If he were on the phone with Min, he could hang up. But they are before each other, just like this, in their bathrobes with hotel sketches and the pictures of what they were to each other spread beside him, a reminder of what Min made and what Min wanted and what Min can claw for with all his greedy power to decide for himself. Not because hyung grants it, but because Min asks for it.

It feels like Ja-hee's hands on his back. It feels like Joon-young's pinched fingers against his cheek. It feels like hyung's hand through his hair when they were small. It feels like their father forgetting to pick him up. It feels like Joon-young saying _someone else._ It feels like Eun-bok's scars under his hands. It feels like a choice he is making as himself, both of himself together.

Min faces hyung as himself, the evidence of Min's lies now facing up on the table between them. "I accept the responsibility."

Hyung exhales, his hands lifting from the sketches only to drop empty and half-curled. His voice is clotted, his face like wavering at the edge of a cliff. "Once I know, I can't unknow it. Once I say it, I can't unsay it. And once you say it, I can't not have heard it. Do you understand me?"

Min reaches across the papers for those empty hands, fills them with his own. He doesn't know how to draw him back, but he knows Jung Sun-ho's touch steadies him. "Hyung." It's so strange to call him that again. "I promised to tell you about me. Do you still want to know?"

"Of course. Yes. Of course." He closes his hands around Min's, tears sliding down his cheeks, and he gulps. "I got so wrapped up in -- I forgot." His hands squeeze tighter, and he's crying. "I'm amazed you want to tell me anything. What is it?"

"You said you wanted everything I could give," Min says.

"Everything you can tell me," hyung stresses, looking over the sketches and back at Min. He sounds hollow. "Five years, and I -- if I want all that you would _give_ me, I'm not sure. That is a different problem. I didn't want this to be true. Five years. But everything you can tell me, yes. I want that."

Min starts slowly, carefully. "I have a problem to tell you, hyung. It has a long background. Will you accept?"

"I accept." Hyung nods, squeezes one of his hands. He's staring at the fourth picture again and he looks like all his words are being choked out of him. "I'm listening."

"I grew up with Lee Joon-young. We lived in many places. First we lived in a house with a stoop. It was cracked. Cement. Lee Joon-young never had plants when he was a child, so the entire side of the house was covered in them. The inside too. I used to sit on that stoop and wait for my hyung."

Hyung's mouth trembles. "I'm sorry."

"I waited," Min goes on. "I waited and I waited. I waited for someone to find me. We moved, and I waited. We moved and I waited. It went on like that. Lee Joon-young fed and sheltered me. I took another name. I went to school. I was lonely there too. I was waiting, so it seemed -- it was pointless, because I wanted to think I was leaving soon. I wanted to think my hyung would come for me. Eventually I gave up. I believed what Lee Joon-young said and I didn't wait anymore. No-one really spoke to me except Lee Joon-young. I was lonely."

Hyung's eyes are liquid with tears that drip off his jaw, his hands hot and clammy in Min's, but he only nods, his mouth pressed in a thin line.

The blur in Min's eyes is saltwater too, and he rubs it off his face with the shoulder of his robe. "I followed my hyung when he came here. I wanted to see him. I followed his career. I envied what he could do without me. I thought it was because he didn't have me. That if I was with him, he wouldn't be this good or this brilliant. I would have been a burden."

"Never," says, improbably fierce. "Never. You never _were_ \--"

"You asked," Min says, the gentlest warning he can manage, and hyung subsides with a wet gasp, his mouth downturned and chin dimpled. Min steadies himself, gripping hyung's hands. "I did what I thought I was meant to do. I did what I thought would suit my temperament. I liked it. It did suit me. I met someone in a bar in my last year of law school. Someone I knew from before I had my name. A handsome man."

"Don't," hyung whispers, frayed like old linens. "Please don't."

Min ignores him. If he doesn't say this now, he's not sure when he will be able to, and he wants hyung to know this too. "I wanted to know what he was like. But it was obvious he didn't remember me. That hurt, but he was good and sex was good, and he took my number. He called me again. I liked him. I hated him and I came to like him. I wanted him to look at me and know me, and he didn't."

"I'm sorry," hyung says, very quiet. He sniffles.

His chest hurts. The space between his shoulders hurts. "Just listen. I spent more time with him -- time, and money too -- and I wanted him more and more. Because of who he was to me, and who I was when I was with him. He liked me. I liked that he liked me. I liked a lot of things about him that I never knew about before. Was it that way for you too, hyung?"

Hyung nods jerkily, drops swaying and breaking off his jawline. "Yes. Yeah. I liked your mind. You were interesting. You've… changed a lot."

"Fifteen years, hyung. I'd never been interesting before," Min says quietly. "I liked that. I liked him. He said he liked me a lot too. We kept meeting and calling, and I wasn't sure I was capable of loving anyone, but I thought if anyone, I loved this man. So here is the problem. I would like my hyung back but not to live as his burden. I would like to keep this man, but my hyung will have to give up on recovering my former self. What should I do?"

"Well." It croaks and hyung clears his throat, breaks a grip to scrub his sleeve over his face and returns his hand to Min's. "Well, the most important question is what you want."

"I am a greedy person," Min says. "The way you are not only David Lee or Lee Hyun, but David Lee Hyun. I want that for myself. I want that from this man." He's not sure he's asked hyung this before, in or out of bed, child or adult. It seems like an oversight now with hyung's fingers trembling against his palms, the shake of his shoulders. The hitch of his weeping. "What about you? What do you want?"

"I want to stay," hyung says. He clears his throat. "Whoever -- whoever, I want to stay with you. I don't want to leave you." His mouth bends, and closes, and he closes his eyes. "I thought you were dead. I'm not leaving."

"Because you pity me?" Min asks.

"No. Because I meant it," hyung says, nodding to the art Min made of his desires. "I want everything you will give me. I will not give you up. Only if you tell me to, and likely not even then."

But he hasn't said it. Hyung knows, Min knows, they know, and they're talking of it, but hyung hasn't _said_ it. "If you stay, and I don't decide, what will you call me?"

Hyung laughs, a quick, shaken warble. "Mine, trusted, beloved -- whatever --" He breaks off into more tears. "Whatever you want."

"If I asked you to call me dongsaeng?" Min pushes.

"No," hyung says. "Not yet. Not before a decision. You're right," his smile very weak. "About the catastrophic moral objection. I should ask why you did it, but I know why. I should ask where you were, but I know where you were. I should ask if you love me, but I know you love me. I should ask if you hate me, but I know you don't."

"You do?" Min blurts, surprised.

"If you hated me you would have told me while I was inside you," hyung says. "You would have pulled me down and told me who you were just as I was about to come, so that you could see my face as I realised. That is what you would have done if you hated me. But you did it like this. You were kind."

He nods to their joined hands and Min squeezes tighter, blinking. Hyung sounds so sad and so sure and he's right. He's right. Min would have and he remembers why he would have done it that way, but the feeling of hating him that much isn't in easy reach anymore, blunted and dusty. Does that mean this was kind? He doesn't think so. Not with hyung's wretched, weeping face. "I didn't want to hurt you."

"I know. So, this way. And I should ask who you are, what you do. I should have all these questions, but I don't, because you answered them. I know you. Warning me off with 'catastrophic moral objection' -- you were trying to protect me. I know you were. I can't be sorry I didn't listen, but I am sorry I didn't want to understand. Help me understand now. Do you want to be called Min?"

Min shakes his head. He thought it would hurt more, to be called Min. He thought it would be a wound. But he finds that wound is, if not healed, not open either. It's scabbed over, growing new skin. Min grew new skin sometime between that lonely stoop and now. "No. I'm used to Sun-ho and I like the way you say it. Min was a burden."

"He wasn't," hyung says, grieving and sure, though his voice crackles. "He wasn't. I loved him. When our father locked me in he played outside the door and called for me. I wasn't alone in there. I wasn't forgotten. My little brother didn't forget me. It helped. I worried about him, but it helped that he needed me."

"If I don't need you now?" Min asks him, and it feels a forbidden subject, a delicacy almost like cruelty. A distracted phlebotomist of a question. "Will you still like me then?"

"I need you," hyung says.

He's missing the point. Min tries again. "If I don't need you?"

He looks startled, like he expected _I need you_ to be the answer that mattered. It does matter, but -- Min isn't alone. It should be ridiculous that he doesn't feel alone when not being alone is dependent on a touch-averse cop and a loudmouth former junkie currently in hospital and a colleague who tried to convince him to let him put up gravure idol posters in their office 'to throw them off the homoscent'. It should be ridiculous and it is. But it also isn't. Min feels strong. Not bulletproof, but strong, as though if he lay back there would be someone easing him to the ground. There's no-one behind him and he knows that, but it still feels that way.

"I'm not saying I don't," Min says. "But if my decision was about what I wanted. If I made a selfish choice, as a selfish person. Would you still like me?"

Hyung meets his eyes. His face is grave and his mouth downturned, his sclera reddened and his face a mess of tears. He looks the way Min's clients look when they are sentenced to go free. He looks at Min with this face, this pointy serious face their mother said was the first Min ever saw, and smiles at him, settles his hands in his. "It should be what you want. I trust you."

Min breathes out. "Tell me who I am to you. Who is it you trust? What is the name of that person?"

"Both. Either. Jung Sun-ho. You're Lee Min. You're Sun-ho and you're Min and for five years I've been _fucking_ you and I didn't realise." Hyung tears his hands free and presses them to his mouth, shutting his eyes, lips contorting in the gaps between his fingers.

Fresh tears run down his cheeks as though they were there the whole time, just waiting for a reason, and he crumples, shoulders rising to his ears and his head sinking in a performance of shame so absolute Min's gut twists in the knowledge he did this to hyung. This is because of him.

"I didn't mean to," he chokes, twisting away from the table to wrap an arm around himself, a last, anguished glance at the pictures. "Min. Sun-ho. _Min._ You're _Min,_ and I --" He presses the back of his hand to his mouth. "I did this. I know why you did it. But why didn't I know you? _I didn't know you."_

Min badly wants to touch him. He wants to peel his hand off his arm and smooth the wrinkles out of his bathrobe. He wants to touch his tears and be sure they're real. He wants to see his face.

He goes round the table, sits in the chair beside hyung and does exactly that. He pulls at his fingers and frees his hand from his reflexive grip and puts his arms around him, forearms underneath his stiff elbows to draw him in, palms flat on his back to touch their faces together. Min never knew how to hold someone like this before Ja-hee held him today.

He's glad she did. "Do I look that different?"

"Yes. No. I should have known. It's my fault." His fist pulls at Min's shirt and his tears run against Min's cheek. "I didn't know. Min. Oh, Min. You waited. You wanted me to know. That's why you said all that. The hints, the comments about Busan. You wanted me to know and I must have disappointed you so badly. I'm sorry."

"I stopped waiting," Min says, but it doesn't help hyung stop, only makes him worse somehow, a higher, threadier pitch to his weeping.

"I didn't know. I didn't mean to do this to you." He pulls back, hands clasping at Min's cheeks, fingertips digging in, and his eyes are raw and red and wet, searching his face. "I never meant to hurt you. I never meant -- I didn't _recognise_ you." He shudders, his swallow visible and painful-looking. "I'm so sorry, Min. I'm sorry. It must have hurt so much."

Min swallows, blinking hard, and grips his wrists. Hyung is looking at him as though Min is still five years old, frozen in a time where hyung was the one who hurt him the most. Who could have hurt him the most. It's sort of wonderful, a reminder of how things used to be, and also very bitter. Hyung doesn't know Joon-young holds that title these days. "I stopped waiting, hyung. Being Sun-ho was… I didn't mind so much. I had you."

"You do," hyung says, and his face does something truly awful, a terrible twist like the verge of a panic attack or food poisoning. "You did. You did have me. You _do._ Sun-ho -- Min --" He shakes his head. "Min. I didn't mean to --"

"I think," Min cuts in, "what you meant doesn't matter. I knew. I chose to. I chose to do it."

"No," hyung says. "No, it makes sense. Oh, it makes too much sense. You could have told me your name and I would have gone with you. You could have told me. But you didn't trust me. You wanted to find out, so -- and then I didn't recognise you." He groans low in his throat. "I'm sorry, I'm only realising now how much you -- it must have hurt."

He's not sure what hyung wants to hear, what would repair this. If it can be fixed. He's thought of this for years. Hyung's seams unwound in his palms was always a dream, always the goal, but now he has them and all he wants to know is how to piece them back together. He has hyung trusting in his arms, the way he always wants hyung to be, and Min only wants to kiss him. So he does.

Hyung draws back, tears still liquid on his cheeks. "I feel responsible for this. I am responsible. You know I didn't look for you, you know I gave you up as missing. Why _would_ you tell a brother like me?" His voice is very small. "I was supposed to look after you."

"You did," Min says. "You told me nice things when I asked you to."

"That hardly --"

"Stop self-flagellating," Min interrupts. "Stop it." Hyung is a tremble against him and Min isn't sure what to do. "What am I to you now you know? Tell me that, hyung." It still doesn't feel quite right in his mouth to call him that. "Do you think it must be one or the other?"

Hyung shakes his head slowly and wipes his face. "I've known you as Sun-ho almost as long as I knew you as Min. I want to say it must be one or the other. I would like to say it is only one."

"Because of the catastrophic moral objection," Min guesses.

"Yes. Seeing you as Sun-ho is about what we were to each other. Min, too. I would give you up for Min, but you would give up Min for Sun-ho. This is both a moral objection and an irreconcilable difference and I don't know how to begin to resolve it. I will try, but at this moment I really…" He sighs. "Will you still let me stay?"

"Of course," his throat thick. He never thought hyung would be the one to ask. "Of course, hyung."

Hyung wipes his face with his wrists, the blotchy colour in his cheeks beginning to settle. His tears are slower too, less torrid. "Let's just use names for now. Can you call me Hyun? Or David. Hyun would be better, but if it's too close --"

"Hyun," Min interrupts. It feels like hyung does trust him. It's a good feeling, if terrifying in its responsibility. "Is it too close?"

"That should be fine. And your name?"

"Sun-ho," Min says. "I'm Sun-ho. Min is … a long time ago. You might want him back but I don't think I do. I want the part where I'm yours. I want that."

"You have me," hyung says steadily. "And I'll have you. Whoever you end up being. Whatever we end up being. Know that." He presses his damp hand to Min's cheek. "Thank you, Sun-ho. For doing it like this. For these pictures and that one. Giving him to me must have been hard."

Min finds it easy to lighten his tone when he's being so sincere. It's charming. "I was balancing a debt."

"I'm glad you have people to protect," hyung says. He smiles back. His face is still terribly puffy, but at least his eyes still crinkle. "Will you tell me about them?"

He can, can't he? He can tell hyung everything he's ever wanted to say. He can do that now. "I have so much to tell you," Min says. He blots both their tears with a napkin. "Wash your face first, hyung. You look dreadful."

"I told you not to call me that," but there's no heat in his complaint, and Hyun leans forward, steadying himself on Min's shoulder and dodging Min's attempt at another kiss. "I don't want that. It's not you. It's just a lot to think about. For me. Do you understand?"

"Not really," Min says. He might not ever be right for hyung, but he can at least tell him the ways he isn't. It feels good. Even if hyung refuses, it will be said. Min's finding a lot of value these days in unearthing all the things he thought were meant to be secret. Like Ja-hee said. _Lo_ _ok what happens when we talk._ Min wants that with hyung. "It never felt wrong to me. You were the first person I wanted. It's different with you."

Hyung nods slowly. "I know. Our sex is good. It's very good and it doesn't quite feel wrong to me either," he says. "Even when I think about it. But in turn that means I feel wrong for not feeling it is wrong," with a quick flash of a smile, rueful. "I think -- culturally inculcated shame, if you understand that."

"In theory," Min says, careful of hyung's mood. "I know there are moral objections."

"Right, but there are other considerations. When I think of you as Min, I remember you as you were then, and I don't want to fuck you. You would not want me if I did."

Min wishes this were an interrogation table, that hyung was a client, that Min could know what to say to him. "But I am not. It's been twenty years. I am not that person." He gestures to the sketches, unsure how to say it, the _rightness_ that comes with touching hyung, having him. The way the world makes more sense when hyung tells him about it. "I'm not a child."

"I know. I know. It's a problem of mental associations and it is not your problem. There are still other problems. In theory I should be repulsed now that I know. In theory. By all rights I should be, but I am not repulsed. Neither am I comfortable. I am not comfortable for you." Hyung picks at his fingernails, eyebrows raised as he speaks. "I'm not sure how to ask this. Have you felt that sex with me was necessary?"

"Of course," Min says immediately.

Hyung pales and the look he gives Min is terrified, of all things it could possibly be, and it's bewildering. Usually hyung likes it when Min says things like that. "I will ask another question. Have you felt there would be consequences if you didn't have sex with me? Negative consequences?"

Min doesn't understand whatever train of thought this is. It's _hyung_ but it sounds like he doesn't know how much Min wants him, and that failure is hard to bear. He thought hyung knew. Min's not sure what _more_ he could possibly do to show him. "I always want to fuck you. You should know that."

"Does that mean you haven't --" Hyung tips back his head, a swallow moving in his throat, and he rubs his mouth and looks at Min again. "I am asking if you have had sex with me when you didn't want to have sex with me. Because I am your --" His face freezes in pain. "Because I am your hyung. That is what I am asking."

Min starts, slowly, to understand. It only baffles him further. How can hyung not _know?_ "That's nonsense."

Hyung throws up his hands, mouth working, and his shoulders rise again. "I won't apologise for caring whether I've coerced you into sex, but it remains that I _do._ I care very much. Please answer. Don't dismiss me. Just answer."

He looks hunted, miserable, wet-eyed. Is this what it does to him, to think -- it's traitorous, it's a betrayal that skims his every nerve and makes the hairs on his skin rise all over -- to think of doing as Joon-young has done? Is this what Joon-young should have looked like, after the floor? If it was sex to fuck him after he put his hands on his neck, if it was sex what they did when they were drunk, if it was, then should Joon-young have looked at Min like this afterwards, as though he would rather have every phalange torn out than have done it? Should he have regretted his certain action the way hyung regrets just the _possibility?_

"I always want to."

"Sun-ho." It sounds very tired. "You used to say that about Lee Joon-young."

Bile rises, settles. He speaks when he can, neatly and evenly. He means it too much to say it any other way. It's like this, or not at all. And hyung asked. "I thought about other things when I let him. It didn't matter. It was what it was. When _we_ fuck, I don't think about other things because I want to feel everything. I don't want to miss anything about the way you touch me." Min tries not to choke with how much he means it. "I want to remember for when you leave."

"I do too," hyung says, and Min doesn't understand his tone. He doesn't understand the softness of his face, but he can see his relief in the abrupt collapse of his posture. "I remember too. Thank you. That -- I was worried. Thank you. I'm grateful. If you ever change your mind and I've --"

"I won't. Does being grateful mean I can kiss you?" Min interrupts. He may, possibly, be whining. He expected this but that's different from watching hyung turn his face away from him, different from spreading how he feels at hyung's feet. Hyung should _know_ already. He should have known.

"It means you can kiss me gently," hyung says, sighing, his hand going to Min's arm, and Min leans in again, kissing his lips, the freshly dry skin of his cheeks, his lips again, and the second time hyung responds, leaning into Min too. It feels the same as always, warm and thorough and good.

Min looks up at him afterwards. "Was that uncomfortable?"

"Not exactly. It was odd. I really do need to think about this. I need time to think about it. I know it's not a home, but it's open to you if you want to be here more often. If you want to contact me like we do when I'm away. If we could talk more. I would like that. I don't want to lose contact because of this."

"I always want more of you," Min says honestly, and Hyun's smile is tearful.

Home. Min passes the tissues when hyung gestures and thinks about it. Truly thinks about it.

The home they had once, their father's. Thinks about Joon-young there on the corner. Thinks about pettiness and pain and the size of his old bed. Thinks about lying with Hyun in that house, eating with him at that table. Thinks about the fact that one day, one way or another, he will have to handle Joon-young. "We could be home. Your home, not a hotel room."

Hyung peels a tissue off his eyelids, checking it for lashes. He always was superstitious about eyelashes. "Do you mean the old house?"

"The place where we lived," Min says. "You said you were moving in there when you came here this time. That means you still have the key."

"I do. We can go tomorrow," hyung says. "Are you sure? You haven't been there since that night. Right?"

Home, with hyung. Hyung, who wants to want him. Hyung, who trusts him. Hyung, who knows both his names now. Min doesn't hate him for the knowing. He would have, once. Now he's glad he could hold his hands, could be there to smile back at him. Could be there to tell him to stay. Could tell him _it's my decision_ and hear _I trust you_ in return.

There's a lot he will endure for hyung. Old memories are the least of it. "I don't want to go alone. But you are here, so I want to. When can you kiss me again?"

"Patience," hyung says, and slides his wet hands into Min's hair, his lips pressing to Min's forehead. "Give me time. I did everything for you once. It's an adjustment. Let me adjust. We can still talk like we usually do. You said something about your friends?"

"Wash your face," Min says, "and I'll tell you about one of my colleagues. I share an office with him now. You'd like his car. It's very ugly."

" _Min_ ," hyung says, exasperated and laughing, and looks startled at himself. But he subsides slow and sweet. "You're my favourite person. I don't think you can say my taste is bad."

Favourite? It makes Min flush. It makes him wonder. "You don't hate me," he says, marvelling, testing. "For this."

"It's true we have a lot to talk about and your approach was -- I -- I am angry about that as much as I blame myself. But I loved you first. The person you grew up to be, Jung Sun-ho, that person, he tried to protect me from this. From himself. From myself, and that's so typical of the person I know that if I had doubts, I don't any more." He links his fingers in Min's. "This was you looking after me. Just that."

"At first it was to hurt you," Min says. "I wanted you to hurt."

"I realise," hyung says. "But lately it's been different. The way you avoid my questions is different. You stopped leading me to you. You started to want to keep me, our relationship. Right?"

"Why wouldn't I?" It feels raw, his throat overstuffed, his calm threatening to burst. "Have you seen yourself?"

Hyung shakes his head and puts his other hand on Min's, his palm strong and warm and tear-damp on the back of his hand. His thumb strokes Min's wrist and his mouth is grave but his eyes are certain. His voice is, too. "Seeing myself in a mirror is different from how you see me. I didn't know how I looked to you before today. I like it very much." Guilt wracks hyung's attempted composure, but he only bites his lips for a moment. "Can you wait a while? I really do need to think."

"Yes. There's time," Min says, and realises it's the truth. So many details to sort out, so many loose ends and so much to tell him, and Joon-young, he doesn't know what to do about Joon-young -- but there's time, now. Min puts his hand over his. "Hyung. Do you know? You found me."

"Yeah. I suppose I did." Hyung nods slowly, jerkily, and presses his forehead to the stack of their hands, shoulders shaking with wordless, wounded noises of the sort Min hasn't heard since their father packed up the family photo albums.

Min leans his cheek against his hair and closes his eyes, indulges himself for a long while in the prickle of his hair and the warmth of him and the tears dripping on their hands. He doesn't bother to pretend he isn't weeping too. Hyung's tears might be guilt or grief or both but Min's are only relief.

Hyung is staying. Min is still worth staying for, despite hyung knowing how much he lied and for how long. He's still worth it to hyung. Hyung doesn't hate him.

Min didn't know that was possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think! Did I disappoint?


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a hell of a week and the last chapter was a very hard act to follow! Hope you all like this one, aka "progress is more of a spiral than a line".

Min wakes to the drifting smell of breakfast and a hand in his hair and an abrupt constriction in his chest.

"You look tired," Joon-young says.

"I am." He yawns and stretches slowly, carefully. Holding onto hyung until they both got cricks in their neck and they needed litres of water each wasn't a good idea, but it felt necessary. It was necessary. "Why are you here?"

"For the pleasure of your sleeping face," Joon-young says with that artificial pleasantry of his.

It's never quite irony, but it's never quite truthful, either, and Min squints blearily at him, cracking an eye open and wincing at his stiff eyelids. Joon-young doesn't _seem_ upset. If anything, he seems the sort of thoughtful that means Min gets second servings and dessert. "Does that mean I should take the day off and go back to sleep?"

Joon-young brushes the backs of his fingers over Min's eyes and Min shuts them automatically, content to lie there in his warm blankets and be looked after. The tips of Joon-young's fingernails ease gound out of the corners of his eyes and the rheumy remnants of tears off his lashes and Min feels them sprinkle his cheeks. Joon-young brushes it all away, his thumb a final sweep across his lashes. "Try again now."

Min blinks and stretches. It's easier to look at him, and he turns his head on the pillows and draws up his knees, the better to curve around Joon-young's perch on the edge of his mattress. "You aren't here just to tidy my eyes."

"Of course not," Joon-young says, and rises. "Breakfast is ready. Come down."

The shower's ready for Min when he stumbles out of bed, and he washes his face in the water, scrubs his arms and chest. He doesn't exactly want to go downstairs to Joon-young, but he doesn't _not_ want to. He likes Joon-young's breakfast and his company and he doesn't feel as though Joon-young's taken liberties. If he has there's no sign of it on Min's body.

Hyung texted him. He sent Min home to let him think, and his texts are -- unexpected. _Thought about you all night… looked at your pictures all night too. Your art is beautiful._ And, devastating: _You're more beautiful, though. Remember to eat lunch._

Min doesn't know what to _do_ with hyung sometimes. He says things and Min just doesn't know what to do.

 _Speak for yourself,_ he texts back, and goes downstairs, not bothering to answer Ja-hee's _call when ur free_.

"There you are," Joon-young says. "Any longer and you might become an eel." He sounds fond. Fond of Min, fond of the ritual of Min taking too long in the shower and Joon-young worrying about water bills. Joon-young does like his rituals, and Min takes his usual seat, passing food back and forth, back and forth, until they have their usual plates assembled.

It's comfortable. Joon-young's been comfortable for so long that to remember Joon-young shouldn't be comfortable, to remember the way the others see him, is something of a puzzle. Particularly Eun-bok. Ja-hee he understands doesn't like Joon-young; Joon-young isn't fond of her either as his first failure. The mutual distaste of it makes sense. But Joon-young only ever helped Eun-bok, and yet Eun-bok wasn't surprised. Eun-bok knew what he was asking, the answer he was asking for, when he pressed Min. _Who gave you that spider?_

He knew before Min answered. He knew.

There must be something Min doesn't understand about Joon-young. Some context Min is missing or too close to see. Like a second self, an alternate face. Joon-young, to Min, is safety and familiarity and protection. Whether that protection is sometimes a smother, or the familiarity sometimes a cage, the safety a litany of Min's failures -- it doesn't matter. It's true all the same.

To Eun-bok, Joon-young should be a protector, a helper, a favourite. Min knows they talk. If anything Eun-bok is privileged to be with Joon-young when Min's phone is off in the courtroom, or he's working late and has it on silent. But Eun-bok wasn't surprised by Joon-young's acts. He called Joon-young stupid, and he wasn't surprised. There must be something Min doesn't understand.

"What are you here for?"

Joon-young smiles and pours tea. "I am here for company, of course. It is lonely to eat alone."

"It is," Min says. He hasn't been eating many of his meals alone these days, now that he thinks of it. Since moving into their office Chun-seok decided they should alternate sending someone for lunch and eat while they work, and while he eats breakfast alone most times, he doesn't often have dinner alone. He misses reheating Joon-young's food and eating while he browses for updates to interesting crimes.

"If you meant to say you want nothing more to do with me, than that is what you should say," Joon-young says. It's placid, bland, pleasant.

Min considers him. Is that what he wants after all?

No. Far from it. No. Joon-young is still -- Joon-young. Joon-young is so much a part of life that to have it without him is unimaginable.

"I meant nothing of the sort," Min says. "To end the experiment does not mean ending everything. I said what I intended to say."

"That's sensible of you," Joon-young says. "You've been distracted lately."

Min considers him. Being necessary isn't the same as being unquestionable, Min is finding. He's able to question hyung now. He questioned him and needled him and shared with him and the world didn't fall apart. Min didn't fall apart. Perhaps, Joon-young too. Joon-young understands so much. If Min can lead him to it, then what will he say? He's not sure he's awake enough for this, but he's certainly comfortable. This is comfortable.

"When hyung talks about Min, he is not talking about me. He is speaking of the child he remembers. So I wonder if remembering Min is more important to him than knowing me. If it would still be the most important if he knew me." There. That's close enough.

Joon-young tilts his head, contemplating him with a gaze so direct Min can't help but smile at the attention. He likes having his attention. He's always liked it. "Do you mean to say you are considering it?"

"Yes. I think it would be best to do it on my own terms rather than wait for him to catch up with you." What's that saying? Forgiveness is better than permission? He's never had to ask Joon-young to forgive him before. "I'm not sure he's up to your standards of cleverness."

"You're flattering me," Joon-young says. "Why?"

"I may have given some broad hints," Min says. "Whether he puts them together or not is up to him. But if you give him more evidence, then he will know. Since it is about me, I want to decide."

Joon-young has this trick of tsking through his nose. Min's the only one Joon-young does it with; it's too distinctively Miss Park's habit to risk with anyone else. "I look forward to the touching reunion."

Min studies him, irritation an itch in the back of his mouth. "Does that mean you will stop using my paintings? It's very heavy handed for your style, uncle. I didn't think you were so desperate." He pauses deliberately, raises an eyebrow just so. Joon-young allows Min to speak honestly to him like this. Min is special. "For recognition."

"Everyone wants to be understood by at least one person," Joon-young says. Min would have craved to be allowed to kiss that smile once. "Your hyung, I think he is that person for me. I'm quite sure."

"How sure?" Min asks. "Sure enough to punish Ja-hee for my mistake?"

Joon-young takes half a breath, thoughtful. "The way you say that, I wonder. Have you been listening to unsuitable people? Surely you don't know her so well, to use her name casually."

That was another mistake. He sees it now Joon-young points it out. He thinks of Ja-hee's hands spread on his back. How she looked to him in that bed, frail and alien. The twin's photograph. Min smiles back. "Officer Sae's injuries were nearly fatal, uncle. If I thought you had done it rashly, I would be concerned if you are losing your touch."

"Would you," Joon-young says. He chuckles. "There's no need. I'm well aware of my own actions. I wonder if you are. Your say your hyung can piece your identity. Are you quite certain that is what you want?"

"Of course it is," Min says. "I've been working towards it for so long. It would be strange to back out now of all times. Of course, it is also strange to have to conceal my paintings from you, but I suppose that was a rash action. On both our parts."

Joon-young pours tea, puts more rice in Min's bowl. "On yours, certainly. But you are prone to being rash."

He meant to do it, then. He meant to leave Min on the floor. He meant to kill her. Min's chest is too small for the breath that wants to form, a wail he could -- and he is holding a knife. He probably shouldn't. Min puts it down, careful to be polite. "It's odd, uncle. Somehow I don't think I'm the only one that's changed."

"Perhaps not. But, Min. What are you doing in your hyung's hotel room, so late and so often?" He smiles. "Are you sure you want to be so intimate?"

Joon-young doesn't know a _quarter_ of it. Knowing what he doesn't feels good. "Hyung is a lonely person with very few friends here. There is room for me to get to know how my hyung has grown up. I am making use of it." Min pours tea for both of them. "He is accustomed to American hours and refuses to adjust entirely."

"How vexing," Joon-young says. "That would explain the hours."

"It does make seeing him more convenient," Min agrees. Hyung makes him feel soft, an animalistic sort of person, so extraordinarily aware of his own skin with just the brush of his hand on his hip or his mouth on the nape of his neck.

Joon-young makes him sharp, sharp and strong, and Min likes it, how it feels to be more _Min_ in his presence, more of the Min that liked to push needle and thread through an animal's fur just to see how far its spine could stretch, that wanted to know what would break first in its struggles, muscle or bone or skin or plain old difficult-to-palpate cartilage.

Hyung says he is kind, but hyung is special to Min.

He would like to tell Joon-young about the things hyung said. He would like to say, _he said he would stay, uncle, he is staying for me._ He would like to say _I got to him first._ He would like to say _I will kill you when you touch him._

"He may come back to the house, uncle," Min says. "He mentioned it yesterday."

Joon-young looks pleased. "It's a shame to leave the house empty. I have tended the gardens but it is not the same as having a neighbour."

"Especially when that neighbour is hyung?"

"Of course," Joon-young says. "You would be pleased too."

Min concedes the truth. "Delighted. What are you here for, uncle? Since we're not having sex."

Joon-young tilts his head, smiling. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Min says. "You may as well tell me."

"I am here for you," Joon-young says. "You have been distracted and tired and it is not like you to end the experiment without telling me the reason. You should tell me what it is."

Min's been more distracted, more tired, in the past. In the past Min worked shifts after school and overnights, and tolerated them because Joon-young worked just as much if not more. In the past Min has slept four hours a night, has done homework crammed into a train seat, has slept on bare concrete and snatched sleep sitting up while the machines were checked over on the hour.

These hours, these legal hours of a climate-controlled office, a warm bed and comfortable clothing and an ergonomic chair, are very little in comparison. They wear him out. They don't distract him the way Joon-young is suggesting. In the past he would have jumped to answer. Now he only looks at his face and wonders, wonders, wonders.

"It was your idea to have me be an attorney," Min says. "Do you regret it? Your friends use my work but not your children. It seems impractical. Not like you."

Joon-young sits back, cradling his teacup in both hands. "Most of them are not equipped to handle contact. I have told you this. When you are needed, you will be called. Otherwise, I thought law suited you."

"It does. But suiting me and being useful are different things. Uncle, why is it that none of them called me? The position of an attorney relies on being trusted, but if Officer Sae does not trust me, I cannot represent her well. I obeyed you and helped them. I thought I followed your orders well. But it seems to me that they must think I am not trustworthy."

"Officer Sae is her own example," Joon-young says, smiling. "Doesn't it speak well of my efforts that they have no need of your services? I should think this is a good thing."

 _Bullshit,_ Jae-hee would say. Min agrees. "These are children with unorthodox origins," he says. "A total lack of legal involvement isn't a logical result of becoming your albatrosses."

Joon-young smiles brightly. "Naturally it isn't. You _are_ an attorney."

"Uncle," Min says. He decides to switch topics before he starts screaming. "I've been thinking. If I do bring hyung to father's house, would you cook for us?"

"What an excellent idea." Joon-young looks _delighted,_ young with it. "It would be my pleasure."

"We may," Min says idly, "play a game or two. How do you feel about truth or dare?"

Joon-young shakes his head. "That's a drinking game for children."

"How else other than the truth are you going to win his trust?" Min puts down his cup and saucer. "You showed us to him. Do you want to know what he thought?"

"Rhetorical questions are impolite," Joon-young says.

Min smiles. It feels more a baring of teeth, a stretch of his upper lip. "He said you assaulted me. That it was obvious I didn't want you to touch me." Min watches him closely. "That it was cruel."

Joon-young's eyebrows crease in a telltale of genuine surprise. "You have spoken about this."

"He volunteered his opinion," Min says. "He had strong feelings on the subject. He cares for my welfare as a friend." Min licks his lips, his mouth dry, his tongue parched. He could drink a hundred more cups of tea and never have enough for the way Joon-young so clearly doesn't understand why hyung caring is important. "You overplayed your hand."

"It may be so," Joon-young says. "But I have other ways to make myself interesting than a failed experiment."

The hurt of it is corrosive, a sour belch forming in his gut and inviting him to curl around it like a wound. "When did I fail you, uncle? When I have I --"

"You know you need me to corral your personality," Joon-young says, impatient. As though Min should know. He does. He does know. "You were lucky that probation didn't work against you this time, but it was only luck. You may as well ruin yourself and throw away all I have done for you. Is that what you want, Min?"

"No," Min manages to say. "That's not what I want. What I want is not to be accused of things I didn't do." It _hurts._ When has Min ever refused, ever -- he _always_ \-- ten years, and he never, until -- "I ended it. That doesn't make it a failure."

"Perhaps you shouldn't repeat your hyung's misconceptions," Joon-young says. "He must not be as brilliant as I thought. How disappointing."

"That is not my failure," Min says. It's only half as cutting as he wants it to sound; he feels as though he has only one lung to work with, the other compressed into a terrible stitch of pain beneath his ribs.

"Isn't it? How did your hyung come by this impression if you didn't encourage it?" Joon-young sounds so kind. "I think you wanted him to pity you. It's understandable. Pity from your hyung must be a pleasantly immature feeling."

"I've never wanted that," Min snaps. There's nothing pleasant or small about hyung's pity. It's sticky tears and red eyes and hands uncertain in his all of a sudden, it's hyung making terrible noises on Min's shoulder and clutching onto him like he thinks _Min_ will leave him if he doesn't, and the last thing Min wants is to encourage the idea that Min ever wanted to leave.

He never did, and from the way hyung reacted, everything he's said, Min wasn't a trade to hyung. Min was a _theft._ Joon-young stole him. Joon-young.

"I want him to see me as an adult," Min says.

"It would be easier if you behaved like one and stopped repeating silly rumours. Even I can't protect you from all the consequences of your actions," Joon-young says. "You have an office now. If the experiment were still on-going I would like to see it. Perhaps I will one of these days."

Min halts, his throat thick. He knows what it means when Joon-young says things like this. He knows what it means. Min should stop.

Is this a threat, then? Is this Joon-young threatening him? It must be. But it's just Joon-young telling him to be careful. Treating Min with the exclusive right to a warning. To the privilege of knowing when Joon-young is irritated, the privilege of having the chance to do better, to live up to his wishes. It's a privilege, it's something Min assumes, and Min is so special for it. He really is. "I understand, uncle."

But the way Eun-bok said it repeats in his mind. _Who gave you that spider?_

And Min knew he knew. How, if he is so special, if it really was such a privilege, did he know that Eunbok knew the answer? How did he know it was the right answer, how did he know to defend Joon-young?

It's hardly as though Joon-young needs defense, he says that himself, but so often people don't understand. Can't understand.

Eun-bok knows Joon-young. He understood. He knew and he asked, and Min knew what he was asking. They both knew. But how, if it's so special, is he looking at Joon-young's face and seeing someone he doesn't quite recognise? Why is he looking at him and remembering the floor cold against his hip? How it felt to collapse to his knees, how it felt to bang his cheek on the tiles and listen to Joon-young tidy his own clothes, how it felt when he walked away and left Min there. He didn't even turn the heater on. He just left.

How is Min meant to begin to reconcile that with hyung's face last night? Just the _thought_ of it had him looking so sick and scared like Min could break him open with just a word. How does this begin to make sense? If everyone else is not special, but hyung is special, and Min too, and Joon-young, then why is it so different? What is the _difference?_

It can't just be caring. Joon-young cares for him. Min knows he does; he's still _alive_ , it's obvious. What does hyung have that Joon-young doesn't that Joon-young is like this? What does Joon-young have?

He wonders if he's made hyung feel like this in the past. He checks his phone, half-hidden under the table, and finds fresh texts. _Of course. I am eating a healthy breakfast and thinking of you as usual._ from hyung, and from Ja-hee _srsly call me_

Min eyes Joon-young, seemingly absorbed in eating, and texts back. _What are you thinking?_

_I'll tell you later._

Answering Ja-hee's requests is as good a way to get away from Joon-young as any. "I should take this call, uncle," Min says, and excuses himself to the yard, front door held firmly shut behind him. It's the only door in the place with any sound insulation.

"Oh boy," Ja-hee says. "Hey. So. They want me out by the end of the week, but … I'm not allowed to bend over."

Min doesn't see the point of this. As far as he knows she doesn't fuck that regularly. "Why is that important?"

She makes a wry, hissy chuckle. "How clean d'you think my place is?"

Joon-young won't have cleaned for her, wouldn't ever, and everyone sounded so busy in the hospital room, including the twins. He can't quite picture the twins taking up rag and mop, and he can tell where this is going. "I don't like cleaning."

"Come on. Please. It's gonna be a fucking disaster and it'll break my heart. I try, you know?"

Min rubs an eyebrow. "They could have surprised you."

"Come _on._ At least think about it? I'll owe you. Everyone else's telling me it's fine but Hye-jin just says not to worry about it. My floor is definitely _fucked._ You can at least drop by and check they haven't burned my chairs?"

Min has court today, but tomorrow is an office day and he has a day off coming to him anyhow. He knows what he's going to say; her home isn't far off his commute and he does owe her. He does want to balance his debt. Still. "I'll ask them how bad it is."

He dials and Ja-hee's landline rings five times before someone picks up and launches into singsong. "This is Sae Ja-hee's house, Hye-jin speaking, what do you want?"

The eldest twin, then. "This is Jung Sun-ho. Ja-hee won't be in the hospital much longer. Have you cleaned?"

She makes an aggrieved noise. "I put a towel down, okay, do you even _know_ how much shit I have to do? It's fine anyway."

A towel, on a wooden floor, on a bloodstain that size. They definitely did not spend enough time with Joon-young. "So not at all," Min says. She's right, that floor is absolutely fucked. He can't remember if she rents. Probably.

The idea of her being homeless because she helped him him doesn't feel good. Min didn't force her to do it but it still doesn't feel good in the way Chun-seok's career taking a sideways turn because of Min's laziness didn't feel good.

"If you care that much why don't you do it? I don't have _time,_ okay, I'm doing everyone's lunches, I'm carting people around the whole fucking city, do you even know -- no, you have no idea what I'm talking about --"

"I do," Min interrupts. Joon-young would have told her not to complain about her virtues. He finds he doesn't want to be like Joon-young in this either. "I do know. I did that when I was your age and I hated it."

"Oh, well," she says, sounding vaguely placated. "Yeah. Well, it sucks. When'll she be home?"

"I assume by the end of the week," Min says.

"That's way too long." She sniffles, a harsh, mucosal rattle. "Play cinderella whenever, I have to go to school now." She hangs up with a clang.

He checks his schedule and replies to hyung. _How do you feel about cleaning up Officer Sae's place tomorrow?_

_Sounds good. If you don't snap at anyone at work I'll tell you what I dreamed about last night._

Min smiles at the screen. Hyung's dreams are vivid and erotic and tempting, and Min's particularly fond of the way he sounds when his own descriptions are turning him on. _You'll tell me either way._

_I trust you._

Min takes Ja-hee off hold. "I'll bring him with me tomorrow. He likes cleaning."

"You're the _best,_ " immediate and overwhelming gratitude. "Ah, so great! I wasn't expecting it to be so easy, but great! Ah, yeah, just watch out for, uh, I made a fuck of a mess killing him, sorry about that."

Min considers what to say. "I prefer your mess to your funeral."

"Thanks," Ja-hee says. "That means a lot coming from you. How're you though? Now that I've actually got you on the phone."

"He's in my house," Min says. "I'm outside. We were having breakfast. He made me breakfast, and I used to know what to do with him. But I don't now. We stopped, so -- normally he would fuck me, but -- I don't know."

She sounds concerned, of all things. "Do you want him there or what?"

"I woke up to him," Min says. "I don't want him to leave. But I don't want -- has he always been like this? The way he --" He doesn't quite know how to describe it in terms Joon-young won't care about overhearing. "Avoiding the question like this."

"All the time," Ja-hee says immediately. "Like, always. He's got his up and downs, Eun-bok says? But he was like that to me all the time. Gets on your last fucking nerve, doesn't it?"

Min doesn't quite know how to admit this. "He's an honest person."

"Wait, when you say woke up to him, what do you mean? Did he fuck you?"

"No. No, he didn't. He was… he made breakfast and woke me up."

Ja-hee's quiet for a moment. "Okay. Just needed to know that first. Look, honesty is the fallback of assholes. You're saying he tells you the truth and take it from me, that's a low fucking bar. Low. What about being nice to you? What about actually fucking calling before he shows up? What about _knocking_ like a civilized dude?"

Min pictures telling Joon-young to _knock first_ and can't manage it. "He made me breakfast. That's civilised. I just --"

"You're just talking to me instead of him, it's all fucking fine, sure," Ja-hee says. "You have the right to kick him out and nobody in the fucking _world_ would blame you for kicking him out, he's a fucking parasite."

"That's not true," Min says sharply. Too far is too far, and that is much too far. She doesn't have the right. "If anything we were parasitical and he was doing his best. He worked hard to look after us. _We_ are his burdens."

"He chose us, if you've forgotten. We didn't just walk into his arms because he offered us a fucking lolly in the street. And anyway, I work hard for my kids too! I don't walk in on them whenever I want, it's fucking _rude._ Even the ones that live with me, I always knock. And you know what? If they tell me to fuck off I _fuck off._ " Ja-hee sighs. "Either he raised you and I get to judge his parenting or he didn't and you get to tell him to fuck off. Either or! Think about it."

Min's had enough of her for one morning. All of today, in fact. "I'm hanging up."

"Oh, _fuck_ y--"

Hanging up doesn't make him feel any better. He puts his phone in his pocket and considers the weeds growing in the tiles. Someone should fix that.

Min walked into Joon-young's arms. He got into the car and there Joon-young was. She didn't, maybe the others didn't, but Min did. He did.

Joon-young had every right to dump him by the side of the road with a broken neck. Could have. Should have.

He folds his arms around himself, swallowing hard, his phone cutting into his side. Joon-young deserves repayment for his forbearance, of course. He doesn't do it out of generosity. It's just -- Min's never thought about the balance before. He always assumed it would be -- forever, because of course it would be, but he doesn't know why that's an of course, just that it is. How does he know that? _Why_ does he know that?

Min turns to stare at the door.

Joon-young would ring the bell for hyung. He knows that without a doubt. If it was hyung's house, he would wait.

But this is Min's house, and what is Min's is Joon-young's, more or less, but perhaps, if it was a little less, things would be better. Perhaps. It wouldn't feel like this. He contemplates Joon-young _asking_ to be let in and it sets a chill along the backs of his arms. Joon-young doesn't ask like that for things that are his. Unless he's very angry, hopelessly so. The floor is only the most recent example of what happens when Joon-young has to ask; it's not a fair thing to do to someone who sacrificed so much and gave him so much. He even made Min breakfast this morning. Leaving him on the stoop would only add to the debts Min owes him for a petty, silly reason, if it can be called a reason at all.

He pictures hyung waiting and it comes easily. Hyung would wait. He would call first, of course. They arrange it beforehand for each other, always. It's only polite.

Thinking about politeness from Joon-young only sends more shivers racing down his legs. Min doesn't _want_ Joon-young's politeness. A polite Joon-young is -- not good. He doesn't want what it would cost.

Min isn't sure how to reconcile this. Of course the rules are different for Joon-young, but she talked as if it wasn't a valid exception. As if Min should expect it of him. Regardless of the outcome. As if Joon-young were any other man.

She's wrong, of course. But of course she's also not wrong. Joon-young is mortal, not some erotic paranormal creature. He sweats and bleeds. Min's seen that enough.

But he's _not_ like anyone else. He can't be expected to be like others. They should know better than that. He doesn't quite understand why they don't.

He doesn't understand why he would be content to stare at the weeds all day rather than go back inside, either. All he has to do is get his briefcase. He has his keys and his phone. Joon-young can close up. He just needs his jacket and his briefcase. Joon-young will close up the place before he goes to work himself.

Min's breath comes short and unsteady. He just needs two things. A plan. A plan will help, and he thinks it through, how to go through the door and his hallway to the place where he always puts down his briefcase. He can pick it up, turn around, take his jacket from the coatstand. Call a goodbye to Joon-young and be gone, just like that. It'll be fine.

It'll be fine. Joon-young will be fine. Min will be fine. They will both be fine. This is a ridiculous and pathetic thing to worry about.

The sound of the door opening makes him stumble.

"You shouldn't forget this," Joon-young says, smiling as he holds out Min's briefcase and jacket. "You'll be late if you don't leave soon. Ah, it's a bright day today."

His mouth is too dry to speak, and he reaches for the jacket but Joon-young gestures for him to turn around. Min does as he's told, holding out his arms and shivering at the brush of Joon-young's fingers on his shoulders and neck, how he smooths Min's collar.

The handle of his briefcase touches his fingers and he closes his fist around it and manages to speak. "Thank you, uncle."

"Make sure you get some air on your way in. Being cooped up isn't good for you."

Min can't turn to look. He only nods and starts down the drive, his hand finding his phone stowed in his pocket. He feels -- he doesn't understand why he _knows_ it's only Joon-young, and it's a warmth, a comfort, and why, at the same time, _it's Joon-young,_ and that is a reason to be like this.

He'd like to blame her. He would. But there was a reason he went home with Eun-bok, and it was this. This feeling. This --

Min doesn't like the way they see him. It's not true. It's not all of him, it's simplifying a complex man for the sake of persecuting him, for the sake of shifting blame. It's not true.

It's -- it's --

Min gets into the car and starts driving.

Say it's a little true. Say it is. So what? What does that have to do with him?

It used to be that everything to do with Joon-young was Min's business, but clearly Joon-young himself disagrees, and this is something else that doesn't have anything to do with Min so in conclusion there is no need for Min to concern himself with how others see Joon-young. It's never been his concern and it never will be. Joon-young can defend himself; he hardly needs Min's help against the worthless misconceptions of worthless people.

He remembers Ja-hee's hair wet in his hands, how she'd grinned when he wrapped a towel around her head, and tightens his hands on the wheel.

Worthless people. Worthless. Of course worthless, to speculate on someone like Joon-young.

Eun-bok cried in his sleep when Min drove him home.

Worthless, of course.

And hyung --

Min turns on his radio to the most mainstream station he can find and blasts the volume of some hideous repetitive beat overlaid with artificially pleasant voices. It won't drown out his thoughts but he can let it try.

***

He calls hyung at lunch, his keyboard pushed back and his laptop off to the side, noodles in front of him. Min very much likes having the table space to spread things around.

Chun-seok eyes him from the other desk. "You'd better not be having phone sex, asshole."

Just for that he says, immediately as hyung picks up: "What are you wearing?"

" _Asshole,"_ Chun-seok shrieks. "I don't need to hear this, I'm sorry about the porn, just _stop._ "

Min laughs at him.

"You probably shouldn't use me to aggravate your colleagues," hyung says, and there's something off about his voice. Like he does, in fact, mind.

"What is it?" Min asks, sobering and ignoring Chun-seok's groan. "You don't sound well."

Hyung makes a considering noise. "I'm cleaning the house. It's very dusty and nostalgic and I don't want to go into the basement without you. I can, of course, but I would rather you were here."

Is hyung asking? No, this is asking. "I can come over tonight," Min says. "I remember where it is."

"Ah. You would?" Hyung sounds disproportionately relieved. "Thank you."

Min eyes Chun-seok as he eats his own lunch and scrolls news articles on his computer, crumbs dark blotches all over his keyboard. He's pretending not to listen but doing a terrible job of it. "Do you want to tell me what you dreamed about?"

"How about I tell you when you get here? I've finished the kitchen and cleaning out the pantry didn't leave much. I need to restock, so… I could make dinner."

"You haven't really cooked for me before," Min says, pleased at the thought, and he lets it come through in his voice. "Yes. Let's do that."

"Do you have a favourite?"

"No, not really. Whatever you make will be fine." Min settles more comfortably in his chair, watching Chun-seok still. "Are you planning to clean the entire house?"

"As much as I can," hyung says. "I've finished most of the ground floor but there's still a ways to go. Do you know who has been looking after the garden?"

Min's mood sours. "Who do you think? He likes gardening."

"Someone was in here," hyung says. "Before I came in. Someone was here, they spent time here. Some things are missing. Do you think he would have taken them?"

It's so like Ja-hee's conversation this morning that Min has to resist the temptation to just hang up. "It's what he does. Of course he would tend it. Of course he'd come in. It's yours."

"If I give you the spare key," hyung says, "will he still come in?"

"If he wants," Min says.

Chun-seok waves for his attention. _Who are you talking about,_ he mouths.

Min shakes his head. _No-one,_ he mouths back, and leans his head on his chin to hide behind his monitor. Hyung's been quiet too long. "Are you there?"

"I was going to invite you to one of the clean bedrooms, but it would be risky to you if he knew."

"He's not that unreasonable."

"Min," quiet and soft and so missed in his ear, and it strikes something hollow in him. It should have fixed everything, to have hyung know. It should have. But it didn't. It only made different problems and did nothing about the longest, thorniest problem of all: Joon-young.

"It's not your problem if he sees us," Min snaps. "I'll deal with him."

"Yes, and you'll call me afterwards to pick up the pieces. That makes it my problem."

It's hard to breathe. He -- he thought hyung -- "I didn't know it was such a problem to help me."

"It's _not,_ " hyung interrupts, and the fierce certainty of him eases the knots in Min's shoulders. "It's not a problem. It is never a problem. What I mean is, I don't like to see you hurt unnecessarily. If I can avoid it, I will."

Min lifts his chin and watches Chun-seok dump the rest of his lunch in the bin and go to the door. _Coffee?_ he mouths exaggeratedly, and gives a thumbsup when Min nods. It's easier to talk when Chun-seok closes the door behind himself and leaves Min alone with hyung's voice in his ear. Easier to think. "And if I want to take the risk? What then?"

"Then I decide if I want to take it with you," hyung says. "I don't. Not under these circumstances, not with him. I don't." Hyung's speaking carefully, over emphasising like his voice will break if he doesn't. "I'd rather you safe and well. As safe as possible."

"I know him better than you do," Min says.

"I trust that. My answer is the same. Can you think of any way for him to know that won't inevitably harm you?"

Min doesn't particularly want to say it, but hyung sounds so pleading. Like Min's withholding some magic to make Joon-young not Joon-young, and Min just … doesn't want to admit this. He doesn't. He's sick and tired of telling hyung over and again that Joon-young likes him best, wants him most. He's tired of hyung not believing him. "If you told him it would be easier. If it wasn't… obviously my fault."

"It wasn't," hyung says immediately. "Sun-ho. It wasn't. I've had a lot of time to think. Last night and today, I've been thinking. Especially about the first time. I think… the more I think about it, the more I think he told you you were unworthy of me. Right? If you hit on me, then it was just sex. But if you told me who you were, you thought it was inevitable that I would call you disgusting, or beneath me. Right? Joon-young told you that."

"I thought you gave me away," Min says. His nose prickles the way it does when he's about to cry. "I was sure you didn't want me. I told you that."

"That's not all it is. You know it isn't."

"This is groundless speculation about something that happened years ago --"

"Yes, and in the meantime I got to _know you,_ " hyung says, so sharp it steals the rest of Min's words. "I know you. That's not groundless. I know you because we've been together so long. Don't call our relationship _groundless_ because you don't like what I'm saying. Please."

"Then what?" Min asks. He should probably apologise. He can't. "What do you think it was?"

"I didn't know, but the more I look back, the more I realise.  It wasn't that you were afraid of telling me." Hyung hesitates. "You were afraid I would confirm what you believed you were. That you were someone who was nothing. Fundamentally nothing. That sort of person. Am I wrong?"

Talking to hyung feels -- sometimes it feels pleasant, and sometimes it's Joon-young slowly removing the skin from the base of his thumb with a vegetable peeler, a pain he deserves, that he earned. Min earned this. It doesn't make it any easier. "So what if you didn't? What does it change now? We were talking about him."

"Yes," hyung says. "We were."

He sounds so angry it makes something in Min recoil and want to reach for the desk, the better to slide under it and hide. "You don't know what I'm like," Min says.

"No?" He sounds cool and even and _furious._ "I don't know that you've made plans to clean up your friend's house tomorrow? I don't know that you just now agreed to visit me for my sake? I don't know that you care about her, or that you gave him up to me to protect Detective Choi? I don't know that you had a thousand opportunities to break my sense of self, and didn't?"

"It's not like that," Min says, struggling to tamp his own temper. He hates that tone from hyung, feels it cut through and _wound_ and so many things rise to the tip of his tongue that he has to fight back. "It's not… I'm not a good person. I'm not --"

"You mean you aren't like me," hyung says. "That's what you mean. You think you're worse than me."

Min finds he's smiling, his lips fixed back from his teeth, his breath enormously hot in his throat and mouth, a stung welter of rage filling him until all he can do is tear at something, anything, anyone. "It's not all about you. I'm worse than _him,_ " he hisses. "You should understand. I'm worse than _him._ You want someone who -- who --" It feels like drowning, his phone creaking in his grip. "You want someone who's kind or generous or, or, or patient or _good,_ you should go to him. You should forget about me and go fuck him. He's the one of us you really want. Go play house with him. Eat his food and get sweet tuck-ins at night and a thorough fuck in the morning. Every morning, because he'll love how much you gag for it. You can go adopt all his snivelling little brats and have a nice life with a generous, kind person and _leave me alone._ "

Hyung's making soft, choked noises, and he listens to the dragging unsteadiness of his breaths, barely audible through the roar of his pulse in his head. "What did I do?"

"What?" Min asks, wary and still so angry that he wants to -- throw things, or murder the next person that comes through the door, or just throw himself out the window and keep his eyes open all the way down to the ground. "What do you mean?"

"If I do something to earn you speaking to me like that, you should tell me. Not bottle it up so you can lash out when I say something you don't like. What was it I _did?_ Can you tell me what I did?" He sounds anguished and angry, unsteady and _small,_ and it makes him feel -- it makes him look up to escape it.

It makes him realise that Chun-seok is standing inside the door with two cups of coffee in his hands. Chun-seok's staring at him with a face frozen so horrified that Min recoils out of his chair and paces to stand in the corner, an arm folded around himself and his back to the room.

It doesn't help not to see Chun-seok's expression. It doesn't help because he remembers it.

That sick feeling in his stomach that might be guilt crawls slowly up his spine and fills his mouth, and panic makes his breath hitch. "I didn't mean to say that. I just --"

"You didn't mean to say I'd prefer your rapist," hyung says. He still sounds so, so small. "You didn't mean to say yesterday was meaningless. Is that it?"

Hyung sounds so hurt. Min hurt him, and he doesn't quite know why he did it. "I was angry."

"I can leave you be." It's so quiet Min almost doesn't catch it. "You don't have to come tonight. If you text me her address I can go there myself tomorrow. You've never taken well to being pushed. I should have anticipated this." He sounds weary, and he's talking like -- like --

"You didn't deserve it," Min blurts. "I don't know why I said it."

"Don't I?" It's so terribly bitter that Min can't help but straighten. "I didn't even notice it was you. I preferred sex to figuring you out. Of course you're angry. Of course you're calling me a slut." He huffs the ghost of a chuckle. "'Gag for it'. It's nothing compared to what I call myself."

Hearing that is a fierce, terrible ache. "Don't. Don't do that. I was just angry. I didn't mean it. Don't. I liked it. I always liked it. It wasn't like that. You know it wasn't."

"Sorry," hyung says after a moment. "For pushing. You're busy."

He's losing him, Min can tell, he sounds distant and formal the way he does when he's about to hang up. "Can I still come tonight?"

"If you want to." He sounds tired, like he doesn't know why Min would. Min doesn't know how to press the universe of things that hyung is to him into his voice, into the phone, into the world at large so Min can shove it into his face, can wrap him in it, can make him see that it wasn't anything to do with him, it's just Min being -- "See you," hyung says, and hangs up.

Min exhales and presses his head to the intersection of the walls, fumbling his phone into his pocket. Fifteen minutes and twenty-three seconds. He doesn't know what he was being. He bangs his forehead against the wall, liking the impact of cold plaster enough to do it again, and again, rattling thumps that shake the back of his neck and make it impossible to form a thought.

"Come on, asshole. Don't do that." Chun-seok pulls at his arm and Min turns, unwilling to look him in the face. Shame. That's what this is. He's ashamed of himself in front of Chun-seok.

Sometimes he thinks this entire friendship arrangement, the intricacies of relationships, all these actions of smallness and largeness, all these transactions, just aren't worth it if it means he's ashamed in front of _Chun-seok_ of all people. There was a time when he wouldn't have bothered to avoid looking at him. There was a time when he'd have stared him in the face and walked on like he was nothing. Min misses it.

Chun-seok puts a mug in his hands. His mug, the one that says _KEEP CALM AND CALL ME._ Chun-seok gave it to him when they moved in. A gift to replace the paper cups. Most of the time he laughs at Min when he sees him holding it, but not this time. "What even fucking happened?"

Min tells the truth. He's too weary to say otherwise, and the coffee is just this side of too-cool, enough to gulp down. "I don't know."

"You don't fucking _know?_ Jesus fucking Christ. What did they do? Eat your firstborn? Borrow your stapler?"

"Nothing." He leans back and shuts his eyes. "He didn't do anything."

"I haven't heard you tear someone down like that in ages," Chun-seok says. "Do you always talk to them like that?"

Min shakes his head. "No. No. I really don't know why."

"Flowers help," Chun-seok advises, and he sucks a whistling breath through his teeth. "Jesus, you were a fucking asshole. You're an asshole but _that_ was being a total fucking _asshole._ "

"You heard what I said. I'm not a good person," Min says. It's easier to say this time. Chun-seok has a round, expectant face that works very well on clients that doubt themselves, clients that want to talk. Min's not a client, but he wants to talk. "He would be better off with someone else."

Chun-seok purses his mouth. It makes him look like a fish. Min can't find it funny. "That's such an asshole thing to say but you sound like you believe it."

Min takes another gulp of coffee. "You of all people would know. I'm not good."

"Of course not, you're an asshole," Chun-seok says readily. "You're an asshole and so fucking brilliant it scares everyone upstairs. You're not good, you're an asshole. But you're good _at_ this. You can be good _at_ things. You can go be good at shit _at_ people. Some people like assholes who're good at things."

"He's not like that," Min says, and manages to peel himself off the wall. He's deeply tired, his empty hand loose at his side and as weighted and dragging as his knees. Too tired to bother with the polite fiction of pretending he isn't talking about a man. The door's closed and mostly soundproof.

"Then why the _fuck_ are they with you, asshole? It can't just be fucking. Is it?"

"I don't know," Min says, and sits at his desk. He puts his face in his hands, his fingers sliding through his hair. It reminds him of Joon-young this morning, and he shudders and lifts his head, his eyes prickling. It used to be that thinking of Joon-young wasn't like this, and he has the horrible suspicion that even if he did offer to restart the experiment, maybe Joon-young wouldn't want him back to fuck anyway. That even if he did get hyung out of his life and go somewhere with Joon-young with fresh names and identities and go back to the way things were, thinking of Joon-young would still be like this. He doesn't know what to do with Joon-young now. He just doesn't know.

Min's beginning to suspect he doesn't want Joon-young anymore. That maybe --

It could just be their influence. It could just be that they're corrupting him with their ridiculous shallow perspectives on things they don't even have the intelligence to understand. It is that. It should be that. If he just stopped it all and went back to Joon-young, it might be better again. If he stopped.

 _Fundamentally nothing_ echoes, and Min shuts his eyes. Hyung has it wrong. It's not that. It's just -- Min isn't a good person, and he needs Joon-young to be something himself. He needs his example. He needs him because he isn't good. He needs him because someone has to tell him what's right, how to behave, how to be. Someone needs to be there to indulge him and look after him. He doesn't -- he can't -- he can't _stop_ wanting him, can he? He can't just go off and -- and he doesn't want to, anyhow. He doesn't want to.

"Jesus, you're a mess." When he raises his head Chun-seok looks _sympathetic_ of all the irritating, useless expressions. "You've really got to sort this shit out. Properly. Without tearing them a new asshole, asshole. Ah, give me it. I'll get some more."

He bustles out with Min's mug and leaves him alone in the office.

Min looks at the intranet open on his monitor, not really seeing the words, and puts his head back in his palms, the heel of his hands pressing on his closed eyes and making his field of vision sparkle.

He doesn't know what he wants. He owes hyung an answer to the decision he claimed was his responsibility and he doesn't know what he wants.

***

Hyung answers the door when Min rings the bell.

He smiles at the sight of Min, but it's brief and sad and Min aches to rewind time. To what he said, to the years of lying to him, to that first approach in the bar. "Come in."

The house is -- the house is -- it's the house.

It's clean. It's airy and spacious and their father made a lot of money and was careful with it too, and no wonder hyung lives so comfortably.

It's clean and airy and spacious and they didn't live here all that long, two years at most, and that's long enough to make Min stop in the middle of the room and fight tears. The piano, the books. The kitchen, and the old chairs. Min used to curl with a book into the orange leather one and read to it like it was someone's lap he was sitting on. Their father used to sit at that spot at the table, and their shoes never quite all fit by the door. There's so much lighting. He forgot how much light their father liked a place to have.

He forgot.

Hyung touches his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

He manages not to pull away. "Memories," Min says. "It's the same."

"Yes."

Twenty years, and it's the same. Same chairs. Same flooring and walls. Same _space._ Their father spent so much time in the cloisters of cells and the mazes of small courtroom spaces, and Min does too. He does too, and he would like this place, if he saw it, if he had the means. He would, too.

He doesn't want anything in common with their father.

Min draws in a deep breath through his nose. The house smells like cleaning agents and meat. "You still cooked?"

"Yeah." Hyung turns away, hands in his pockets, and Min follows him.

It's a beautiful meal, laid out sumptuous like the height of the ceilings, and Min feels abruptly sorry. He was sorry before, but he's sorrier still now. Hyung still did this even after Min said things that weren't true, and the words come easier than he ever thought they would. "Hyung, what I said. I'm sorry."

Hyung spins on his heel with a blink and his mouth half-open, and Min pauses on the steps up to the kitchen table, just one step down from hyung. Like this he's taller than Min, and he looks good even with his habit of wearing jumpers as shirts. This one is striped and this close Min can see the soft fuzz of the thread, smell the soap on his hands. It's the same soap as back then. It makes sense that hyung wouldn't want to waste it. It's the same.

He isn't saying anything, only looking back at him, his mouth closed and his face serious. It makes the collar of Min's shirt uncomfortably warm. "I'm sorry," he says again.

"Thank you," hyung says quietly. His hands are still in his pockets. "It was uncalled for. What you said. It was uncalled for."

"I know," Min says.

"I need you to know something." Hyung tips his head back and blows out a breath, his neck lovely and visibly tense. "If you think I want sex too much, you can tell me. If I make you uncomfortable. If you'd rather do other things than have sex. You can tell me. You should know that now. If you didn't before."

"I always knew that," Min says. From the way hyung's shoulders drop that was the right thing to say, and he presses on, unsure of his words but knowing he wants hyung to relax. To trust him. "I always knew that, and I always liked it. If anyone's gagging for it, it's --"

"No," hyung interrupts. He fixes his eyes on Min's. "We're not doing that. Either it's mutual or it's not. It's mutual, right?"

"It's mutual," Min says.

"So don't say things like that. About either of us." Hyung chews his bottom lip, nodding at something Min can't see. "Okay. Come eat."

Dinner is very quiet. Hyung eats but only a little, and he waves it off when Min offers him a piece of kimchi on his chopsticks.

"I don't secretly want him," hyung says abruptly. "I agree you have a prickly personality, but I am fine with that. I like that. I like your mind. I like your body. I don't like the way you speak to me when you're angry, but I like many other things. I like nothing about him. I will never like enough about him to consider him a better option and I'm so tired of telling you this, Sun-ho. Can you understand? I'm so tired of this."

"I know I keep bringing it up," Min starts, unsure of what to say next, how to explain.

"It's been years," hyung says. "I know who you are now and even that wasn't enough to make me stop wanting to kiss you. Wanting to talk to you. Wanting you. I want _you._ Either you choose to believe me or you don't. I'm tired of defending myself for thoughts I won't have." He twirls his chopsticks in his rice bowl, the line of his mouth sour. "Or things I'll never do."

Min doesn't know what to say, but it won't be what he said earlier. At least there's that. "I don't know if I'm just privileged to see more of him, or if everyone else has a point. I don't know what I want."

He takes a bite, stretching it out, hyung quiet and watching him nevertheless. It's a comfort, the way hyung waits for him to speak. Min likes that about him, has spent hours listening to him breathe between sentences to the background of typing and murmured English. Here in this house of memories it's just the clock ticking.

"My colleague said -- a while ago, he said he forgot my feelings. That I had them. I don't give him proper context, but he said that about Joon-young." Min doesn't know how to say it, to explain how it felt to realise this morning that he was afraid.

Not afraid for any good reason. Just afraid of going back to a house where Joon-young sat at his table and made him breakfast and woke him up in time to eat it before work. Afraid of his generosity like an ungrateful, spoilt brat. Hyung's still waiting like his time is Min's to spend and the thought steadies him a little.

Min fiddles with his plate, unwilling to meet his eyes. "This morning I asked uncle about the night I called you over. I said you thought what you saw was assault. He said I gave you a bad impression so you could pity me."

"No," hyung says immediately. "That was my interpretation. You asked to hear it."

"I thought so," Min says, "but sometimes I don't really remember."

Hyung's mouth is compressed, his face grave. "You realise that says a lot about his effect on you? You prize your memory. You rely on it being precise and acute. That he fudges it for his own benefit is…"

Min shrugs. He doesn't quite see things the way hyung does, but they knew that as children. "It was a bad day."

"If I gave you a list," hyung says, "would you look at it? A list of his concerning behaviours you've told me about. Not so that you do anything with it, but I want you to know what I see when you talk about him. What I hear. So you can consider it properly."

"It's not like that," Min says. He's tired of saying it.

"Just to see what you think," hyung says. "Would you do that?"

He shrugs again. "Why would I need to read your opinion of us? I know your opinion."

"That's not an answer."

He restrains an urge to snap. This is not the time for it. Not when hyung's still so reserved and sad. It itches at Min, that withdrawal. He wants his hyung back, his flirty hyung with the saucy smile. Not this sad, serious man he can picture in a precisely-tailored suit in court, indicting Min's client with precise details and even more precise hair. "Fine. That's your answer. I'll look at it."

"Thank you," hyung says, and Min helps him put away with the food, busies himself with the washing up while hyung leaves the room, pads off somewhere. Their father's study, maybe. It'll be strange to see hyung at that desk as an adult. It was always their father sitting there.

Hyung comes back, takes up doing the dishes and passes Min the teatowel. There's a sheaf of notepaper out of the corner of Min's eye, and he does his best to ignore it. But even his slowest, most exact attempts at drying every base and rim can't put it off forever, and he goes to the table and sits.

At the counter hyung puts the kettle on, takes down two mugs, and Min smooths his hand over the smooth raise of ink.

There's several pages. Definitions and examples first, most of them words Min's familiar with, and then a list. It looks like a checklist of the familiar. Having them all together on a page is an unease like being expected to do badly at public speaking. "Do I tick these? Should I argue?"

"If you want to. The important thing is that you read it," hyung says, not turning around, and Min eyes his back, then his briefcase, and retrieves a pen.

"You asked me to do this," Min mutters. "Don't hassle me about it."

"Since when do I hassle you?"

Min bites his tongue. It's true. Hyung is much more often accommodating than not. Min is just -- something. Prickly, like hyung said. He is a prickly person.

He reaches _uses drugs or alcohol to excuse their behaviour_ and has to cover it and look away. It's not cowardice. It's just not like that. Hyung thinks it is and Eun-bok thinks it is and probably Ja-hee too if she knew, but it's not. It's not. It's _trust._ Joon-young trusts him. That's what it is.

Min reads through to the end, then again. "I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?" Hyung comes to the table, carrying their mugs in one hand and the teapot in the other, and he sits perpendicular to Min, their knees brushing. He looks calmer, more controlled. "An item in particular or all of it?"

"All of it," Min says. He waves at the paper. "It's biased. You're biased."

Hyung wraps his hands around his mug, fingertips shifting like it's too hot to hold. "I agree I am biased. It's a polarising matter and I care for your welfare."

"But this is just being special," Min says.

Hyung's face does something like a cracked egg or a broken heel. " _Min._ " He clears his throat. "These are things you've told me," he says. "It's as objective a list as I could make and it's been a long time in the making."

"Some of this phrasing isn't yours."

"That's true. I use a similar list of abusive behaviours in one of my courses. It's a useful way to think about detrimental social behaviour without bringing up stereotypes of mental illnesses."

Min scoffs, running his fingertips over hyung's handwriting. He doesn't get to see it often; so much of their communication is electronic. But he remembers his handwriting. It's not too different from how it was back when he forged their father's signature on all of Min's papers. "Your students probably hate you."

"There are other reasons they don't like me. I just keep it on the course website as extra material." Hyung's mouth twitches briefly upwards. "I'm honest about what it is and it means I get a few calls a semester from students. Or texts, or email, or whatever they're comfortable with. Once I got a letter on my desk. For the people who need it, it's there. For the ones that don't it opens discussion. Who you are to this list is up to you. How you take it is up to you. I just wanted you to have it."

"Like your students." Min smooths over the most deeply indented line, _financial abuse?_ There's a heavy blotch at the bottom of the question mark, like hyung left his pen there for a long time. "Where did you come up with this one? Some people give money to their parents or guardians willingly. Sometimes it's better for them not to deal with unnecessary stress."

"It's not an original concept to me. But you know my feelings about reliance on a single person," hyung says. "That doubles for financial matters. But we've never talked about it, so I only have suspicions. Does he manage your money?"

"Of course. He's very good at it," Min says. He lets himself smile. "Some of it is to his upkeep, some of it is to others, and some of it is for general maintenance. A lot of it is saved for me in case something happens. Emergencies and things like that."

Hyung makes a considering noise, looking into his tea. "Can you access those savings?"

"If it's an emergency, I'll already have called him," Min answers. "It's moot."

"I suppose … let me be clearer. Have you ever seen a statement? Do you know your salary?"

Min scowls. "Why should I? I don't have anything to do with it. I have a credit card. He pays the balance for me. There's never been a problem."

Hyung looks up. It's like he's seen a ghost. "He has total access," he says quietly. "To everything you have."

"Not everything," Min says tentatively. "He doesn't have you."

"That's true," hyung says, his face an awful, lurching blank until he recovers from whatever it was, smiling briefly and toasting Min with his mug. "That's very true. Do you ever wonder about using your money? For example, if I can't make the negotiations with my dean work, and I have to return to America to finish my commitments before I move here properly. Could you visit me?"

"He wouldn't like it," Min says automatically. "I wouldn't like it either."

Hyung puts his hand on his, fingers as warm and sure as ever, and Min turns his hand over to grasp his, liking the sight. He always likes looking at their bodies together. "Would visiting me be so bad? You could stay with me. I'd introduce you as my boyfriend."

Min shakes his head. "That's a terrible joke."

"I'm not joking," hyung says, eyes flat and his mouth buckling. "I would. I'd like the chance to tell other people how proud I am of you. That I have you. Whichever way you want me to have you." He lifts his chin. "I would be proud."

It takes the wind out of his sails. It takes away everything he thought he was going to say. "I didn't know that."

"I can't do it here," hyung says. "That isn't the same as being happy that I can't."

An entire other country without Joon-young? Min shifts uneasily. "I have to focus on my career."

Hyung studies him, then nods and squeezes his hand. "Think about it." He nods to the papers. "What else bothers you?"

All the speculation on how he and Joon-young fuck, naturally, but saying that sounds pathetic even in his own head. There's no reason to be bothered by _non-consensual strangulation_ or the way it's written overlarge in a hasty flurry with a leaky pen. Hyung cares so much about so many things. Min doesn't know how he manages it. "You think our sex is bad but you're wrong. It was good. It was good and I wish we were still having sex," checking hyung's face and finding it studiedly neutral. "He talks less."

Hyung pauses with the lip of his mug against his mouth. "Is that the only reason?"

"It used to feel nice. When we finished work or had a long day, we'd fuck and go to sleep. Or he'd wake me up and we'd have sex. Sometimes we shared our bedrooms, so we'd go somewhere else and have sex. I liked it. He didn't do it with anyone else. Just me. They weren't worth the effort."

Min listens to the click of hyung's mug on the tabletop and stares at the _accused you of wanting or having sex with others._ line. That was a feature of his teenage years. Joon-young had this belief about teenage desires, and Min had to convince him that waiting until he could have Joon-young was all he wanted. He remembers pushing his cock against Joon-young's hip and panting into his shirt. The way Joon-young's pupils dilated and his hand made a careful fist at the back of Min's head as he watched Min grind himself into coming on his thigh. He liked to watch Min's face. Hyung shouldn't know about that.

"I miss when I --" He exhales. "I miss how it was before I went up to you at that bar. I used to think he was sexy. Not just normal, but sexy. I miss that."

Hyung strokes his thumb slowly over the back of his hand. He sounds like he's forcing the words out of his gut. "Changing attraction is a very normal experience."

"It's not for me," Min says. Hyung squeezes his hand, and Min swallows and grips his fingers tighter. For someone who makes themselves so contained hyung loves holding hands, reaches for Min's so often just to stroke his fingers, to link them together. At first Min indulged his strangeness but now he likes it too. "I wanted him. I did."

"Yes, I believe you felt that way." Hyung pushes his mug closer. "Drink a little. You sound like you need it."

Min drinks gratefully, surprised by the taste. It's what he supposes is lapsang souchong, so smoky it fills his mouth and nose and makes him think pleasantly of fires and woodsmoke and charcoal, the taste of it an overwhelming, wonderful weight like his heaviest winter blanket. "You bought this for me?"

"For you," hyung confirms. There's a smile around his eyes for the first time today. "Do you like it?"

Min nods and drinks again. "It might be my favourite," he says.

"You can have it whenever you come over. I think we're done with this for tonight," hyung says, gathering the papers. "Did you want to look more?"

"No." Min considers him, his steady hands as he taps the papers together and pushes them to the far end of the table. "Why did you want me to see it?"

"I pay attention to you like you pay attention to me," hyung says. "He tells you that you're special, but lately I have noticed disagreements between you. An escalation of behaviour. I wanted to put it together for you, so you could know how I saw him as an outside observer and hopefully take it into account. I hope you will. Does that make sense?"

Min can't help but smile. Hyung _worries_ for him. Joon-young wouldn't really hurt him, but hyung worries anyhow. "I know," he says truthfully.

Hyung's answering smile is beautiful. "Good. That's good."

"You're pushing because you want me for yourself," Min says, testing. "That's also a reason."

"I do, very much," blunt. "Very much. But I also want to say something you won't like. Will you try not to flare up at me?"

"It depends what it is," Min says cautiously. "I didn't mean to say what I did."

"You said it. You said it and it hurt. You meant to hurt me. Would you try?"

"I did," he snaps, and at the abrupt loosening of hyung's hand he breathes in hard, coughs, looks at him again. "Fine. I promise. What is it?"

Hyung draws a deep breath. "I think you should see your finances. At least that. I'm not asking you to take control. I know Lee Joon-young is too dangerous without more safeguards than you have. But at least talk to your payroll department about your salary. You should know what you earn."

"I'm worth what I make," Min snaps. "I don't need to see it to know that."

Hyung raises an eyebrow at him. "Then it shouldn't be a problem to see what they're paying you."

Enough. "You speculate too much," Min says, taking back his hand and getting to his feet.

"I said you wouldn't like it." He sounds tired behind Min. "If you're going to say something to me again, say it up here. Where there's light and room. And a door I can open. I spent enough time being trapped down there without you doing it to me too."

"I wouldn't --"

"Don't make promises you can't keep," like whiplash.

Min feels himself go very still. Hyung isn't moving either. There's no scrape on the floor or the noise he makes when he gets up on his left leg first instead of his right. "I apologised."

"I know. I appreciate it," hyung says. Finally the sound of his chair, that soft grunt. "Let's get it over with."

Min trails him, feeling six again, a buoy floating in hyung's wake in the house where their lives diverged. He thought he would like it.

He doesn't.

***

Min settles at the table while hyung ranges around, touching the bed, the books, the chairs, reaching up to the sill of the high, narrow window. He never spent much time down here. He tried to sneak in once when hyung was here but their father caught him and lost his temper.

"It's not as intimidating as it looks from the top of the stairs," hyung says, investigating a box, sleeves pushed up his forearms. It frames the swell of muscle at his elbow, how his arm tapers to finely structured carpal bones. "Thanks for coming."

"It's fine," Min says, watching him. There have been times when it's not necessarily better, but easier, to simply turn on audio and listen to each other work without speaking. Times when Min sets up video with him and lets it run in silence. It feels like one of those times.

He doesn't mind. There's always so much of hyung to pay attention to.

"I can feel you looking at me." He's squinting into the exposed bulb above Min's head, his hair loose on his forehead, but he's smiling. "Am I still that appealing?"

This is a ridiculous question. Hyung is sometimes ridiculous. "You kept the sketches, didn't you?"

Even in this light he can see the abrupt flush of hyung's ears. "Of course I did."

"You said you looked at them." Min isn't sure if this is the place to talk about this. "You said you were going to tell me about a dream."

"Ah, I did." Hyung straightens, brushing off his knees. "But I realised something else. Do you remember that fantasy we have, about you fucking me in a kitchen during the day, up against the sink? I got here and I looked at the kitchen and I thought it was familiar. Too familiar. You were talking about this kitchen, in this house, the entire time. Weren't you?"

Min feels himself colour. "I don't have a good imagination. It was the first thing I thought of."

"I don't have blinds," hyung says, and puts his hands in his pockets. There's a sly cant to his mouth and voice, familiar from the moments before hyung turns them over and rides him, when hyung pretends he's about to fuck Min and enthusiastically blows him instead. When hyung casually, in Korean, in the middle of somewhere excruciatingly public, tells Min all about his latest dream in detail until Min squirms and puts his hand down his underwear and lets him listen to the effect of his words. "I might have to fix that."

Hyung is  _ impossible _ sometimes. Impossible and breathtaking and Min doesn't know what he'll do if hyung rejects him after all. It feels promising, their conversation upstairs half a world away and their argument even further off. Min's shirt is this side of too tight, catching under his underarms when he raises his arms. He stretches, watches hyung watch him. "What should we do in the meantime?"

"What do you think we should do?" It's neutral except for the way hyung approaches, shoulders loose, his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed on Min's mouth.

Min shifts the chair back. "You could kiss me."

"I could," hyung says, and meanders around the table. He straddles Min's legs, thighs heavy and shapely in his trousers, and settles on Min's knees. There's a look to him, nervy and tense, but the way he brushes his mouth against Min's feels good. "I could do that."

"Either do it or don't," Min tells him. "I've had enough of ambiguity today. I had my fill twelve hours ago." He doesn't  _ intend _ to speak to him like this. He said he wouldn't. Hyung doesn't move, and Min grips his elbows beneath the rucked-up hems of his sleeves. His shirt is as soft as it looks and Min can't bring himself to apologise, but he can try to explain. "I saw him this morning. It threw me off."

Hyung nods. "I'll be straightforward then. I want to kiss you, but I'm not taking off my clothes. It'll just remind me."

"That's fine." It's the same as the reason this is the first time in twenty years he's come back to this house. Sometimes memories aren't a good thing. 

He slips his hands to hyung's chest, curls his fists in that soft, soft knit, hyung's body heat kissing his knuckles and his shirt threatening to warp in Min's grasp. Hyung's thighs tense against his, fabric rasping as he shuffles into Min's lap and wraps his arms around Min's shoulders, new slack draping Min's wrists in warmth and the smell of him.

Starting is easy, his mouth on hyung's, and hyung kisses him like it's been months and not a day, a lingering reunion kiss of tasting Min, of working his lips against Min's again and again, his teeth on Min's lower lip and his tongue tasting the impression of himself.

"You can touch me," hyung murmurs, his breath hot on Min's chin, his heavy lashes gorgeous. "Please."

Min uncurls a fist, slides his hand under his shirt and curls it again in the small of his back, Hyung making a thick noise when Min gathers fabric back into his grip and strains it over hyung's chest and stomach. "Let me look, hyung."

Hyung's flushed, his muscles vague shapes beneath thin wool. "This thing you have for looking at me," he says, arching back over Min's fist. "I like it."

"I know," Min tells him, and licks at his clavicle, his throat, bites gently at the protrusion of his larynx just for the whistling shudder of his response, the bite of hyung's fingers into Min's arms. "I always wanted to look at you, hyung. It was always you." He noses to hyung's ear, gratified by the goosebumps prickling his neck. "You were mine first."

"Yes," hyung says, very soft. "Yes, I am. We should take it upstairs. You can't look at me properly down here."

Min smiles against the curve of his shoulder, shifts and presses it to his skin just for the way hyung moans at the shape of his teeth. "I"m not looking at you. I'm appreciating you. It's different. Sit on the table, hyung."

"You shouldn't call me that." Hyung's throat clicks when he swallows, and Min draws back, watches him use the chair back to get to his feet. Watches him hesitate, then scramble onto the tabletop with spread knees and a deep flush. His shirt is still rumpled over his stomach, slivers of belly and hip showing dark against the black band of his underwear.

"Do you mind? Or do you like it? Hyung."

"That's different. We agreed not to use those terms."

"You could tell me if you like it." Min shuffles the chair closer and goes for his zipper, undoing it slowly, a tooth at a time, just for the way hyung's knees always jump when he hits bottom. Min likes affecting him enough to show his tells. 

Hyung takes a sharp breath and grips Min's arm in the middle of fumbling for a condom. "What are you thinking of?"

"I thought I would blow you," Min says. He licks his lips, unsure of what hyung's face means, the glitter of his eyes and the tragic downturn of his mouth. He doesn't know what he did wrong, to make him look like that all of a sudden.

"I need some fresh air," hyung says abruptly. "I appreciate the offer." He shuffles to the side, leaping off the table and tucking himself back in, the speed of his zipper obscenely loud. "When I said I wanted to go upstairs, I meant I wanted to stop. I don't want to be down here."

His face is strange now, strange and wrong, and Min follows him up the stairs, through the house, into the backyard. He watches him scrub his hands over his face, watches the heave and drop of his shoulders.

It's not as cold out here as it could be but it's chilly enough that Min goes back inside for slippers and a blanket. "Hyun," careful to pronounce it exactly so there's no mistake. "Come here."

Hyung looks back and leans his shoulder against his, his arm around Min's waist. The way his body curves into Min's is a work of trust, the fit of their hips and thighs a beckoning to lie with him on the ground and do something fantastical like count every star he can't see. Sometimes hyung is so far away and sometimes he's half-convinced they are of one body after all, the split halves of some greater genius. "You're warm."

Being able to keep the cold away from him with a blanket and his body feels good. "Are you better?" Min ventures. Hyung doesn't react at all. He tries again. "What are you thinking about?"

"I don't like the basement. Not because I was there, but because you almost were. If he realised which of us it was, if he knew, then it would have been you. It would have been you all alone. But I did something even worse. I told Joon-young." He looks up at Min, eyes unnaturally bright, his sclera growing red. "I promised to keep you safe and I didn't. I told him about you. If I didn't say that, if I didn't betray you, you would have grown up here as my brother. It would have been so different." He makes a wet, snuffling noise, ducking his head into Min's chest. 

Min isn't sure what to do but hold onto him. He's thought about this too. "Or it would be a very slight difference. Not that everything would be the same. But there is something about me, about him, that doesn't work with other people. That would have stayed the same."

"You should remember this is my research," hyung says. "It's a combination of factors and often but not always a traumatic event."

Her blood under his slippers. How she reached for them, told them to run. How that murderer bled, fascinating and blood-smeared in his struggle against collapse and death. How he died with his eyes open and his jaw slack and left shitstains on the floor. How he died. How hyung shot him. Brave hyung, adored hyung, murdering hyung.

He'd been so pleased to be like him, after Changwon. So pleased to have something in common. Now they have so much else and Min, for the most part, forgot about that child. Prosecutor Shin remembers because Prosecutor Shin has a memory like Min's and an amateur's deep investment in blackmail as a method of control. For Min, it just happened like that, a long time ago.

"I don't disagree. But I am sure that combination of factors happened long before my uncle." Min isn't sure what to say. "So I am like this. I am just this way."

"You're sure of that," hyung says. "You're absolutely sure."

"Of course. But because he raised me, you grew up well. You lived comfortably. Shouldn't you appreciate that? For your self-interest?"

"I would rather have lived uncomfortably with you than comfortably without," hyung says. "I would have looked after you."

Min puts his lips against his temple and borrows one of hyung's phrases. "I believe you think that. You were ten. I've met ten year olds. They don't raise children." Even tiny, brilliant hyung wouldn't have managed. Not with Min the way he is.  


Hyung scowls up at him, teartracks bright on his cheeks. "I would have tried."

"And failed," Min says as gently as he's capable of. He appreciates hyung. He does. He appreciates him, likes him, wants to look at him. Appreciates how sure he is of himself, even when it's wrong. Sometimes even hyung is wrong. "You would have failed. I remember what I was. Would you have moved us to a neighbourhood with no pets at all? No other children? No-one to hurt? No neighbours to steal from? Nothing for me to fuck up just so I could get off on watching people collapse and cry?"

"Don't talk about yourself like that."

"Don't," just as vehement, "pretend you didn't bury the dogs after I was done with them."

Hyung shuts his mouth. After a moment he nods and leans back against Min. "I wanted to look after you."

"You did," Min says, and he dares to kiss hyung's hair, his temple, his forehead. "It was just not ever going to be enough. It's logic. You like logic."

"I like logic and you," hyung says. "I want this to work, but if we keep sniping like this --"

"You're being generous," Min interrupts.

"Since you object I will rephrase. If you keep sniping at me, I don't know that we can get anywhere. Why did you?"

Min thought about it the rest of his workday between updating files and meetings with clients and calls to prosecutors. He thought about it between calls to Hye-jin to check if someone would be home to let them in after he finished work. He thought about it between texts from Eun-bok about the progress they were making verifying the results of Miss Sun's testimony and the absolute lack of Eun-bok in any of it. He thought about it between cups of coffee brought by Chun-seok and Chun-seok's attempt at girl group choreography to 'cheer him up'.

He thought about it all day and he thinks about it now. "I need him," Min says plainly. "You talk about him like you know him, and maybe some of it is right. But it doesn't matter if you're right. I need him. You can't look after me."

"Do you need looking after?" Hyung's tilted-back face is thoughtful. "Do you need your finances managed and your house cleaned for you?"

The corner of his mouth twitches. He lets it pull into a smile. "I'm not very good at stress."

"You and an extremely large cross-section of the population," hyung says. "There are methods. Many. This is not an unusual problem. It is a common problem. These are common problems. At least be honest with me. Did you lash out because I was right?"

_ Fundamentally nothing _ echoes. He swallows. "More or less."

"I want you to understand something. You need to understand it." Hyung grips his face tightly in both hands, solemn. "You earned my regard. You lied to me for years. There are still problems. I acknowledge that. But the positive effect is that you  _ earned it." _

"I didn't --"

"You listened to me eat breakfast for three years and you hate listening to people eat," hyung cuts in.

Min shifts uneasily. "I just wanted the time."

"To be with me. Yes. I know. Exactly that. If I love you it is because of what you showed me. It is not because you showed him to me. It is not even because I thought you were a connection to Min. It is because you earned it. You earned that decision from me." His smile is rueful and this side of crooked. It's beautiful, like him. "Everything I want to say is sentimental."

"Please," Min croaks. He clears his throat. "You like it when I say sentimental things. It might as well be the same for me."

"What a nicely-phrased concession," hyung says dryly. "To me you are... not perfect, because no-one is perfect, but you are ideal. Can you understand? Ideal. You are not less than my brother Min. You are just as much. That's why this is so hard for me."

Min's never felt enough for someone before. It might be this feeling. It might be indigestion. "I think I don't want to see him. For a while. Not just sex. Everything. It wasn't this difficult before."  


"Oh," a sound so gentle it sears and all Min can do is turn his face away. "Oh, Min."

"I'm sorry," he says for a third time. "I didn't mean to say it."

"I think I understand," hyung says slowly. "This is what you need me to say. I'm not waiting for an opening. I'm not waiting for him at all. If you do sever contact it's not an opportunity for me. It's a relief because I want you to be safe."

"But what does it make me?" Min asks. A life without Joon-young is unthinkable and yet here he is, thinking it. 

Hyung sinks with him to the ground, cold and damp against Min's knees, the sensation pressing through his trousers. It's really too cold for this. But Min doesn't want to be upright. He wants to wallow and burrow and cling, cling, cling. "It makes you someone who paid their debt," hyung says. "Do you understand? You feel you owe him. Let's say that's true. You have paid. You  _ paid. _ He doesn't have the right to ask more from you."

"I want him to," Min mumbles. He's not sure if he's weeping. His face is too dry for that. He's just broken. "It would all be fine if he would just go back to how it used to be. Not this. I don't like it like this."

He strokes Min's hair. "I don't have any comforting answers. Let's go inside. Get you some tea. Get you warm."

This time, hyung's hands on his waist and wrist holding him up, it feels like hyung is with him. Not leading, not shielding, but with him. Sharing. Walking him back to the house that should have been theirs, and the terror of the first thing he heard being Joon-young's voice finally, finally eases its jaws around his ribs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think! <3 Am I going over the top? do you all want something different? Is JY believable? I have the hardest time writing him. Next chapter will be plottier.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took forever! Depressive episodes are _not_ for the win. 
> 
> Sometimes knowing you love a person isn't the same as knowing in which way you love them, and that really goes double here. They're figuring it out.

"Don't you know how to use a spam filter?"

Chun-seok elbows him away, slinging an arm over his monitor. "Why are you so fucking nosy?"

Min holds onto the mouse and keeps scrolling until he sees _NOTICE OF PAYMENT_ under Chun-seok's arm. He doesn't recognise the name of the department and he opens it, ignoring Chun-seok's feet shoving at his ankles. At least the format is familiar from client documentation. "Is this how much you make?"

"Fuck off, asshole." Chun-seok moans and drops back in his chair. "I need more overtime. I need another promotion. My flat. My _mortgage._ Jesus."

Min's seen the real reason for this screed and it's a striped, ugly excuse to expense his drinking habit. "You bought another car."

"You have no fucking taste," Chun-seok says, and jabs at his screen. "Look, asshole, five percent away, right away, every paycheque. That's savings. I have _savings._ I just don't have money. Asshole."

"I've never bothered with payroll," Min says, and puts his hands in his pockets. Even Chun-seok will be able to tell if Min steers this conversation too abruptly toward the things Min wants to know. "Why not just put it aside yourself?"

Chun-seok goes blotchy. "I have a weak personality! It's not my fault, asshole."

"It's a good idea," Min says. "Who did you get to do it for you?"

"Oh, Min-seok. You want to call him?"

Min goes back to his desk. "Put it through to me. Maybe I'll section off twenty percent and invest in things of better value than sports cars."

"Even you can't afford that, asshole," Chun-seok says, phone against his shoulder, and Min's phone rings. "There. Leave me alone."

"Go get coffee." Min picks up, shifting the phone to his other ear and straightening a fresh sheet of paper. "Is this Min-seok in payroll?"

"Yes, sir." The voice is older, heavily altered by smoking into a vibrato so thick Min's glad the door is closed. How does Chun-seok know him? Same club? A fellow car fan? "What do you need, sir?"

"I want to put in an exemption but I don't remember my payroll details," Min says. He figures the same approach that worked on the bank this morning will work here and Min-seok takes not too much convincing, soon reading off details and forwarding attachments to Min's inbox with titles like _Yearly Statement_ and _Financial Disclosure._ Establishing his email address makes it clear that in this too, Joon-young's is listed as his own and all of the paperwork goes to Joon-young's house.

The bank told him Joon-young checks Min's balance the day of his salary clearance like clockwork, makes transfers Min doesn't care about. They implied it was illegal if Min did not consent. Min's quite sure he did consent; he never bothered to know about any of this. They were always fine. They always had to work, but they were fine. Joon-young's extravagances were Joon-young's, and Min did his homework and what he was told.

Min's still not sure he sees anything wrong with it. The balance had enough zeroes for Min's taste, a comfortable five-figure amount. But he thinks, the way he's begun to think lately, of taking hyung to dinner somewhere, a place like hyung might want, somewhere friendly with shades in the front window and staff with a personal stake in allowing their customers to hold hands over the table the way hyung likes to hold Min's hand. He thinks of paying for dinner for once, the way men in dramas pay for their dates. He thinks of the way hyung talks about New York, the open specificity of his comfort there. How these two things could coincide, if Min only arranges it.

He thinks of explaining the charge to Joon-young and feels uneasy. He's asked before about this or that purchase in passing and Min just didn't think anything of it; of course Joon-young knows. Joon-young is Joon-young and he always knows.

But a place like that is more or less an open invitation to a barrage of questions and Min isn't sure he'll be able to answer them. He's not sure he wants to be asked to answer them at all.

Min-seok is helpful enough, adding Min's email to the distribution and agreeing to transfer one percent of every future paycheque into Min's fresh new bank account. The card will come tomorrow but the bank has an app, and he looks at his new, tiny balance and the cardless cash alert and feels dizzy with the possibilities of all the things Joon-young doesn't _have_ to know.

Hyung would want to know this, and Min texts him. _I can take you to dinner._

_I don't mind that you don't._

Min couldn't because he would have had to explain. Min didn't know that before, but the more he thinks of it, the truer it feels. He didn't, because he would have had to explain what he was doing there, with hyung. What he was eating, and why. Where he was eating. He could buy hyung a drink at a bar without having to take it out of change. He thinks of reviewing statements like the ones now in his email but full of things he remembers doing with hyung, an accounting outside of his own head. A coffee here, a drink there, a luncheon there. He pictures having it all on paper just like that.

Hyung wanted to know about things Min never thought of, things Min didn't do. He asked that when Min was on the floor. He wants to take hyung somewhere and show him this thing Min never thought he would want to do.

 _I want to,_ he texts, and he thinks about buying hyung dinner. Thinks about taking him somewhere suitable with his new money and paying for the meal. He's used to the expectation of doing it for his supervisors and the senior members of the department, but this isn't expectation. Min wants hyung to eat food Min paid for without Joon-young's approval.

Min wants hyung's hand on his across the table.

***

Picking up hyung feels good, like Min is a helpful person, fitting the trope of a local and hyung his guest. Min finds it easy to smile at him, to drive and put his free hand palm-up on his thigh. A few red lights later hyung reaches over and the tight warmth of his hand is a pleasure. Min grips hard in return. "You look good."

"You always think I look good," hyung says, his body angling to Min's, his knees pointing at the center dashboard. "Did you have court today?"

"In the morning. Paperwork, three hearings, more paperwork." Min never knows how much to say to hyung about his work; for all that hyung _sounds_ understanding of Min, for all that he does seem to listen, they are technically, theoretically, on sides that don't interlock well. It doesn't matter to Min if someone like hyung is pushing to have his client arrested; what matters to Min is his own skill, his ability to use the theoretical neutrality of the articles of law as justice for people who didn't have a Joon-young. People Min understands. People Min envies.

He doesn't think of it it as _there but for the grace go I;_ that's Chun-seok speculating on things that aren't his business. Comparing Min to them is ridiculous. But he's fond of the theory of justice, of being an agent of certain fate. If a client is free because of Min, it is fated to be so and Min is only the means of fate to hand down the sentence. If not, then not, and that too is fate.

"What did you do?" he asks, turning left. Ja-hee's not too far from where he lives, but Min's never visited before. There's never been a reason good enough. She always handled her own furniture woes eventually.

"Not much," hyung says. "I was with the taskforce. It seems very clear to me that Lee Joon-young is the killer in this case. But there isn't enough evidence to question him, let alone charge him."

"I can't help you with that," Min says.

"I'm not asking you to. What I do want to ask you is this: why did he want me to see Sun Min-jee? Why leave a code with her location at your neighbour's house? Why leave her alive to speak to?"

Min doesn't know everything about Joon-young. Not these days. But he still knows enough. "He wanted you to understand. I've told you. He always wants that."

Hyung squeezes his hand. "Having her tell me about the days you worked, both of you, and a little about Detective Choi's condition, and that you were both cared for by any reasonable standard, is not going to make me have sympathy for a man who stole my brother. He can want that. I am not obliged."

"You're so sure of yourself," Min says. "Against a man like him."

"You might as well say that he is sure of himself against a man like me," hyung says. "But you don't. Is it because you don't bother? Because he comes first? Or are we that alike to you?"

"There are similarities." Min merges onto the freeway. He likes driving fast, likes the sensation of a machine working around him in a collection of motions and electrical synapses, that he is sitting inside a mind with Joon-young's power to kill. "Not too many."

"You can tell me," hyung says after a while, "if I sound too much like him."

"An amoral person," Min offers. "You would call him that, right? An amoral person who does good things."

"Does he?" Hyung sounds wary.

Min cuts off a tailgater and presses on. "You talked to Miss Sun. You should know he does."

Hyung breathes out, a sigh hollow through his nose. "An amoral person. How am I similar to that?"

He thinks about it. He thinks the way he would think about connections in a case, schedules and points of order, inviolable facts and disputable speculation. He thinks about it, thesis by thesis, until he has it arranged the way he would recite a speech. Then he reduces it, because this is not a speech to a court, but an answer to his brother, and he reduces it again, because this is his brother Lee Hyun, not his brother David Lee.

The final answer is simple.

"What matters to you is an individual you choose for as long as they are useful. Otherwise people don't matter at all. You are alike that way."

Hyung's hand slips out of his. "You are also like that." It sounds pinched. He sounds like Min hurt him.

"I don't pretend I'm not," Min says. He's tired of emotions, scrubbed of them as though he poured out all he had in that hotel room and is now only beginning to restock. It hurts that he is hurting hyung, but it's a distant pang.

Hyung doesn't say anything for a long time, and when Min glances over he's staring at his hands, worrying the edges of both thumbnails against his index fingers.

"You don't have to take it so hard." He can manage that at least.

"No, I'm thinking. I've been thinking about it. You're not wrong. It's more complicated than that because there is a person that is not a choice for me, but otherwise I can see how it is like that. It is a very common state but whether that justifies it --"

Min's mood sours, his throat hot. "Who?" he cuts in over hyung twisting himself in knots. "Who is that person?"

"You," hyung says. There's a smile on his face, small and lovely to see. His eyebrows tilt incredulity. "You really had to ask?"

"I'm not sure of you," Min says. "You know now. We both know." He grips the wheel. "I don't know what it changes. What it should change."

Hyung makes a low noise and an awful, telltale sniffle. "I think I suspected for a while now. Too many things just didn't come together the way they should have. I'm so sorry, Min. I think about you and I think how sorry I am. I think about you, and I'm sorry. I could have done so many things differently."

Min gestures to the glovebox. "Don't get snot on my car. I don't … mind, that you have guilt. I like it. I think you deserve to feel guilty. But I don't want you to cry so much. I'd rather have sex."

"Charming," hyung says, sarcastic even through a tissue, and he blows his nose. "There's no reason you can't do both."

Min shifts his shoulders. They always get stiff on a court day. Stiffer still when he wants to say something he's not sure he should say. "It's not because of that. I don't like it when you cry. Even if you deserve to. I don't like it."

That, of all things, makes hyung reach for his hand again, and Min gives it to him at the next red light, hyung bending and kissing the back of Min's fingers. "I love you too," very quiet English.

"Why?" He clears his throat and continues in Korean. Even with practice with hyung's voice, hyung's background chatter, the movies hyung told him to watch subtitled instead of voice-overed, he's not as confident with it as he'd like to be. Not with important things. "Why are you saying this?" simultaneously pleased and mystified. Every time he thinks he has hyung figured out, has the shape of him in contours and necessary layers, hyung comes up with something else.

"You care," hyung says, and he straightens but doesn't let go. "This is easier when you remind me that you care. Even though you call me amoral. It's still easier."

"You need the reminder?"

Hyung weaves his fingers through his and fits his fingertips in the valleys between Min's knuckles. "Don't you?"

Min shakes off the question, though not hyung's hand. Never hyung's hand, warm and dry in his. He only needs one to drive. "You didn't say if you wanted dinner."

"You haven't before," hyung says, listing in his seat, seatbelt high under his chin. "I assumed I had more money. I usually do."

He doesn't like it when hyung talks about money. He talks about it like someone who grew up with always having it. Hyung might lecture him on whatever it was, financial abuse, but at least Min knows what it's like to work for it.

Hyung just … has it. A fancy suite and a luxe membership and clothes that feel like they're worth more than Min's art supplies. It makes his teeth itch. Life insurance bought the house and life insurance lets hyung keep it. He's aware he's -- Ja-hee calls it something ridiculous. Winding himself up. A clockwork toy of an idiom. He's winding himself up, and he takes a deep breath.

"I called the bank today," Min says evenly. "I have a card now. And money. But I don't have anything else I want to spend it on. I thought I'd take you somewhere like the bar we met in. A place where you don't have to pretend to be straight."

"You're not worried about your reputation?" hyung asks. "If someone sees you there it won't go well for you."

"I was meeting someone of importance to a case at a location that made him comfortable," Min recites. "See? I am a good liar. There's nothing to ask me about."

He rubs his thumb along the side of Min's hand, a lovely distraction Min hates to force himself to ignore when he turns into traffic. "You really want to do this. For me," hyung says, like it's a test he expects Min to fail.

"Yes. I won't go to America. Even if I had money, I wouldn't go. I don't want to. So --" He shrugs. "You don't have to. I know it's not real."

"Of course it is," hyung says. "We're together."

Min looks over at him. "Do you ever get tired of sentiment?" genuinely curious.

"Towards you? From you? No. I don't think I ever will."

"Oh." Joon-young doles sentiment like inching a stretch of rubber around a wad of paper, easing the backs of his fingers against Min's hair or rubbing his nose against his nape when they fuck. He's always been like that, always will be like that. They could be in the bookshops and bars hyung describes, a turnoff from a station and up subway stairs into what he calls _places for us,_ and Joon-young wouldn't be any different. He's himself. He's not playing a role as Lee Joon-ho, he's himself, just more of what Min knows from across the table and doing dishes side by side, and he hasn't called since yesterday, hasn't contacted him. Hasn't said anything either way, not even through a third party, and the vague sounds of him in Min's head hardly count.

It's not unusual for him not to call. But Min knows he can't be happy with the way things are going. As it stands Min is stealing hyung and Joon-young can't stop him. As it stands, too, the only reason they would collaborate is about Min. If Min were to be hurt, or a hostage in some way. A hostage to Joon-young, or someone Joon-young knows. He isn't a hostage at the moment for all that hyung's list played in his head when he tried to sleep last night. He isn't. But he could be, if Joon-young were … if he felt Min was pushing him out. The way Min has been pushing him out.

Joon-young has friends, and contractors, and the skill. Min doesn't. Min learned the theory of murder, but he's never put it into practice. Perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps all of this was a mistake.

He contemplates having to choose, of having Joon-young be his first, and realises that muffled noise was hyung talking. "What did you say?" through a mouthful of bile.

"I asked," low and focused, something frightened about it, "where you went to. You weren't here."

"I was thinking," Min says. "It happens." He looks around to figure where they are. Not too far away, but he made a wrong turn. To home. To -- hyung's home. No. He can feel it in his fingers. To _Joon-young._

Min is a few broken pieces of magnet and Joon-young is his lodestone, and even with hyung's touch, hyung's hand in his, that won't change. How can Min expect to go to Ja-hee's and pretend that he wouldn't be better off sucking Joon-young's cock, begging for forgiveness -- "Pull over. Pull over and talk to me. Now."

"We'll be late," Min mumbles.

"You're not a safe driver right now. Do you want to get me killed?"

Min flinches his hand out of his, anger a hideous aftertaste. "Not like _this._ "

"Pull over before you do," implacable, and Min turns down a side-street, then into a cul-de-sac lined with flowers and too-few lampposts and one open spot. Whoever's place this is will be irritated when they show up. There are lights in most of the houses, silhouettes of movement. They don't have long before someone pokes their nose out.

Min doesn't put his head in his hands, but he wants to. "I was thinking. It just happens sometimes." The accusation that he'd do it by accident, that he'd -- after he spent all these years resisting the urge, the need, the craving to hurt him, to pursue him, to trap him and torture him and fuck him -- after all that, hyung thinks he'd do it like this? Anger is a heady thing. "It's not that dangerous."

"Of course it's too fucking dangerous to drive distracted," hyung snaps. "Especially in traffic like that. _You_ could have been killed."

"I don't care," Min says. It's as dull in his mouth as he feels, and he shuts his eyes and leans his head back against the dashboard, both hands on the wheel. "I just … shouldn't have said anything to him. It would be better if I hadn't. I shouldn't have said anything to you. Or I should have said everything. I don't know."

His eyes ache. He's tired. He's been tired since he started working in the back of a soju restaurant when he was ten, and these days he's not only tired, he's exhausted. He feels like the curtains in their second flat, he and Joon-young in the old days. That second flat with its worn-through linoleum and curtains so tattered by their cleanliness that they hung in a collection of loosely-tethered strips. Like that. Min feels like those curtains. Drained and wrung and scrubbed into insubstantial haze.

"Nothing's changed for me," Min says. "It's the same as before you knew. I still -- I feel the same. I want you the same."

"I don't," hyung says.

"I know that much," Min says, hurt a slow, gentle tearing, a piece of him coming apart under its own scalded weight, and bites his tongue, then gives up on biting it enough to check his temper. There's no point questioning fate. There's just no point. "How much has it changed? Do you still want me? Do you --" There's an elderly man approaching down the driveway. "We need to go."

"Let me drive," hyung says. "You can tell me the directions. Let me drive."

"Fine," Min says, and slams out of his side of the car, hyung circling in the opposite direction to get into the driver's seat. "Just a dispute," he says to the man leaning on his cane, watching them suspiciously under white eyebrows. "Good evening."

Hyung doesn't waste time driving away, and as soon as they're back on a main road he starts talking like they never stopped. "Of course I still want you. I told you. But it's complicated. You've hesitated to touch me, but as much as I think about it, none of those times were because you thought 'ah, this is incest'. You wanted whatever you could get of me."

He's not wrong. But there's something about the flex of hyung's hands on the wheel, the double-check in the windshield mirror though the side is clear to turn. "The question?"

"Now that you can have me as a brother, do you have second thoughts? I know what you said but it was a tense conversation. If you've changed your mind --"

"I haven't," Min says. "Have you?"

Hyung's chest rises and falls. His fingers flex, one by one, and his thumbs tap, slowly, along the rim of the wheel. Ten o'clock and two o'clock, eleven o'clock and one o'clock, until they meet at twelve o'clock, the time of bells and broken promises. "About you? No. I haven't. I want whatever you'll give me. I meant it when I said it. I mean it now."

Min watches him very carefully, intent on the slope of his throat and the pinkening curve of his ear, the faint colour of his lashes. "If sex is what I want to give?"

"But is it what I want to take?" hyung asks back. "My best theory about why you're so unaffected is a combination of your attachment being fixed so entirely on me that this is only an extension of our relationship, and Lee Joon-young's influence on your attitude to taboo."

Hyung has no idea. "The day you saw us, he suspected I was allowing us to become too close," Min informs him. "He disapproves of incest of blood relations. He always has."

"Is that what that was about? I shouldn't be surprised he went so far in the name of jealousy, but I suppose I am. Then again, you also lash out when you're frightened."

"Frightened?" Min repeats, tasting the word, the implicit connection of it to Joon-young. Joon-young, frightened? "Hardly. He wanted to make a point. He made it. Probably the method could have been better, but retrospect is useless anyway."

Hyung smiles in a quick turn of his head, eyes still on the road. It doesn't look happy. "Tell me something. Is his objection to incest academic or personal?"

Truth is a sourness in his mouth, the aftermath of swallowing a pickled persimmon. "What do you think?"

"I think you know what I want to say," such a string of tension in him, shoulder to wrist, the muscles of his thigh jumped high and held there. "I want to say, we could try to be both to each other. I want to say we could try that third, like you said. But if he has such a personal connection, then it is such a risk. You took such a risk."

Min shifts and reaches to touch hyung, meaning to catch the edge of his pocket or the tight seam of his trousers, but hyung presses his hand over his and guides it to his thigh, holding his hand there. Min watches him, the workings of his face, the thinking angles of his eyebrows, and rubs his thumb slowly over warm fabric. "It was my decision. Every time was my decision. It was worth it, hyung."

Hyung nods jerkily. "If there is a problem, if there is a concern, even a small one, you must tell me. You have to understand. You must tell me. I don't want to give him an excuse with carelessness."

"Of course I will tell you the relevant parts," Min says.

"Weaseling," hyung says. It sounds affectionate. "I should know better."

"It's prudence," Min corrects. He shifts his hand further up, the backs of his fingers pressing to hyung's crotch. "You would say this is dangerous too."

Hyung's thigh jumps. "Of course it is. You shouldn't distract me."

Min finds hyung's lukewarm zipper and watches him swallow at the deliberate click of his nails on metal. "Do you want to be distracted?"

"You still need to give directions," hyung says.

"Of course I will. Two blocks, then turn right." He digs in his fingers and tugs down the zipper, easing down hyung's underwear, bunching it under his cock. Half-hard already. Hyung must have a thing for this, but the more Min considers it the more it makes sense. Of course he does. No-one who didn't would call Min in the middle of a cafe queue and detail exactly how he wanted to be fucked. "You said you dreamed about something, but you didn't get around to telling me. You could tell me now."

"It was a little like this," hyung says, his cock hot against Min's hand, and Min shifts in his seat and unzips himself too.

Traffic isn't so bad, the lighting far-spaced; it's unlikely they'll be seen. It is of course a risk. This is Min's car, Min's plates. But hyung's flush is very pretty on an already-pretty throat, and Min does like to distract. He's always liked to be someone capable of creating a distraction.

"We were in a car. The back seat. I don't know why we were there. But the windows were one-way. It was a busy intersection. They couldn't see in. But the windows were cracked for air. You were fucking me, and you told me to be still so they wouldn't know that I was naked and begging for my brother."

Min loves the sound of hyung's voice. He always has. He loves the way hyung speaks. He loves the way he spools out eroticism like this, in pieces of sentences, in transparent attempts at detachment betrayed by the quick of his breath and the heady pulse of blood at the base of his cock. He loves the way hyung pretends, and pretends, and pretends, calm and collected rationale, until he gives in and presents himself for Min's mouth.

"What did you say? To beg for me." Hyung licks his lips, barely making the turn, and Min eases his grip, watches hyung steady himself and straighten his spine. "Tell me, hyung."

That gets him a choked, abrupt clearing of hyung's throat and a dull flush on his cheek. "This really shouldn't be arousing. This is a textbook case of instinctive repulsion complicated by codependence and forced absences as well as habitual --"

"Hyung." It's not difficult to let his voice go soft and low in his chest. He's there already, for hyung. His hyung who wants Min to touch him. Dreams about Min having him in false secrecy. Hyung still wants him. Wants the risk. Likes it. Isn't that what this is? Hyung liking the risk of having Min. "Tell your dongsaeng."

"You're distracting me." He clears his throat again. "You put your hand over my mouth to keep me quiet. But before that I said, 'please fuck me, Min. Be a good dongsaeng and fuck your hyung'. I said that." Hyung glances over and whatever he sees on Min's face makes his cock fat in Min's hand, makes a moan drift out of his mouth and his hands flex on the wheel. "Don't look at me like that."

Min pulls on the the seatbelt, forces as much slack as he can get out of the mechanism, and fixes it in place with a yank, bending over hyung's lap and pulling a condom out of his pocket, careful to open it in the footwell between hyung's knees.

"Not here," hyung says, his cock so stiff it juts upward against his belly. "This is too dangerous."

"This won't take long, hyung," Min says. "Let your dongsaeng blow you."

Hyung nods, but it's so jerky that Min only waits, and waits, until hyung blows out a loud breath and nods more definitely. "You're right. It won't." The underside of his jaw is pink, his chest heaving. "Please. I can't call you the other one yet, but Sun-ho. Please."

Min balances the condom in his mouth and rolls it down with his lips, his own cock desperately hard in his hand. He's never done anything like this before and it feels good to pool the risk, to share it with him and trade it in licks of his tongue, in keeping himself stretched across the gear shift and his head tipped low between hyung's thighs, in the fullness of his cock in his mouth. "Oh, God, you look so," and hyung cuts off with a moan.

Forcing himself to stay down and keep his motions unobtrusive or eyecatching means having hyung's cock in his mouth is much more a shallow grind than the blowjobs Min's used to giving, his hand picking up spit sliding down from Min's mouth and smoothing over the base of hyung's cock. "Turn onto the highway."

It doesn't take long at all, a cock in mouth and thrusting into his hand, Min's hips threatening to buck off his seat and crash him to the floor, before hyung's wincing and pushing at his cheek. "Wait. Wait for a red light. I can't come like this. I'll crash."

"Sure, hyung," Min says, and sits up. They'll need a pretext to satisfy the cars around them, and he fetches a water bottle from the backseat, heavy in his hand, and waits, watching hyung and his bare cock, his shifting shoulders and restless breathing, the way his offhand drifts to stroke himself. "You want to come, don't you?"

"Oh, I do." hyung says. The relief in his sigh when they pull up at a light is unmistakable and hilarious.

"I need an excuse," Min says dryly, and hands him the water bottle, deliberately fumbling it so it drops to the floor between hyung's legs. "Whoops."

Hyung's still scoffing when Min puts his cock back in his mouth, and Min feels the sharpness of his indrawn stutter. He goes for the bottle, groping along the footrug, hyung's cock hot on his tongue and his hips rolling up like if it were even a little less risky, hyung would be holding him down to fuck into his mouth, would be spreading his knees for a finger or two.

He starts begging the lights not to change, the closer he is to coming, the longer it takes, and hyung gasps when he comes, hips arching and his hand clawing Min's shoulder the way he does when they do something not-quite-transgressive to his morals. When they do something hyung desperately wants regardless. It makes the pain feel good.

Min shakes him off and sits up, bottle triumphantly in hand, and holds it out to him with a pointed smile. "Success."

"In more than one way," hyung says, grinning and fighting it and grinning again as traffic starts moving around them. He puts the bottle on the dashboard to tuck himself in, condom stripped off and into the bag of Min's trash. "Ah, you haven't."

"I want you to watch me," Min says.

" _Min._ " Hyung rubs his neck and takes a drink, shifting the gears out of park. "You know I can't when I'm driving." The look he gives Min after he swallows makes him feel undressed, spread and perched and ready for his tongue, his cock, and he's tempted to ask. He's so tempted to ask for it, public and reputation be damned. "Be patient. Next traffic light."

Min drinks greedily and tightens his seatbelt again, letting it snap against his shoulder. "Did that help your reservations?"

"I don't know," hyung says. "I definitely know you impair my judgement." He huffs something like a laugh, eyebrows high. "I'm not doing that again, but I'm glad you did once. So I can remember it."

"And think about it when you masturbate?" Min asks, slouching and idly ringing his cock with thumb and forefinger to keep himself hard.

"I always think about you," his driving steady but his eyebrows still high as he shakes his head at the road. "God, that was dangerous."

"I wanted to," Min says. "You wanted to. If someone reviews CCTV and cites my plates, I'll get a letter and deal with it then. It won't stick." But hyung doesn't look any happier, and doubt makes his jaw tense. "You did want to."

"I did." Hyung clears his throat. "That doesn't mean it was a good idea."

"Is any of this a good idea by your standard?" Min asks back. He's wondered for a while now how this all fits, would fit, into hyung's moral lexicon.

Hyung shrugs. "I am a selfish person and I would rather have you than not. Despite the complications."

He talks about it like a necessary dental appointment, and Min tucks his cock into his underwear and pulls up his trousers. He doesn't feel like trying to be sexy anymore. "Despite the complications," Min repeats. "Certainly a phrase imbued with desire."

"I'm trying," hyung says quietly. "It's hard to reconcile. Harder when you do things like this."

"You wanted me to," Min protests. "How is doing what you want making it harder?"

"That's true. I did." Hyung's profile isn't giving him anything to work with.

He's lost his place in this discussion and he feels unmoored, adrift in a way so different to the glee of having hyung in his mouth again. "Was I supposed to refrain? Were you testing me?"

Hyung makes a frustrated noise and something about him escalates, a seethe in his voice rising and rising until his words reverberate off the windows. "I just think we shouldn't have. Don't you ever regret sex? Do you ever regret hitting on me instead of telling me who you were? I don't mean as a throwaway line to placate me. I mean, did you ever seriously think it through and wonder, maybe I shouldn't have lied to him for years, maybe I should tell him the truth? Did you ever think that?"

Min doesn't bother to peel himself off the door. His shoulders are fine there. There's enough slack in the seatbelt that he can stay as far away from him as possible. He's not sure he's heard hyung raise his voice like this more than twice before. He's never liked it. "You're angry."

"Yes," hyung says. "Yes, I am very angry. I can tell myself all the reasons why I shouldn't be. Why I should understand. In theory I do understand. I am trying very hard to understand." He makes a choking sort of noise, and Min's palms burn with the urge to touch him, to reach for him. To soothe him somehow. "I wish you'd told me. I wish you hadn't made me someone who would fuck you."

"That's not my fault," Min says. "You didn't recognise me." He recognises a sign and sits up. "You missed a turn. Next left."

"I know. I hate myself for it," hyung says, indicating and shifting into the next lane, then the next, and finally the turn-off. "There's a lot I hate myself for. I'm sorry. I shouldn't speak to you like that."

"I started it yesterday," Min says. "It's fine." It's not. "The house isn't too far." It's quiet after that, hyung taking his directions, and they pull up in front of a house littered with cars parked on the lawn and bicycles by the front door. Either the children give her rent money or she's richer than Min thought.

Hyung parks quietly in the driveway, a perfect reverse parallel, and when he turns off the engine he sits back with his hands over his eyes. "Can you answer? If you ever regretted it."

"Not at first," Min says, shifting cautiously to the centre of the seat, focusing again on hyung's weary face. "But lately I wondered if I made a mistake. I thought about telling you."

"You didn't want me to reject you. I know. You thought I would. He taught you I would. I know that, but I still -- I know it, but I'm disappointed you didn't. It hurts. I'm angry you didn't. I know it doesn't make sense to be like this with what I know about how things are for you. Are and were."

Hyung drops his hands to his thighs, fingers relaxing into a half-curl so inviting Min wonders if he could reach for him, and he marvels at the way hyung strips at his own pride and spreads himself open like this. There's a half-dozen things to pick at, to force his hand with, in just this little bit he's said. He could press him on the hurt, he could press him on what he knows, he could press him on whether he really has decided not to reject him after all. He could press and push and shove, and make hyung slam out of the car and walk off. He could hound him all down the street until he cried. Min knows how to do that, now. If Joon-young cries at realising he can discover things, Hyun cries realising what he didn't know he had.

He doesn't want to make hyung cry, and Min fits his hand into those loose fingers, unfastens his seatbelt to shift closer and squeeze without tweaking his shoulder. Hyung makes a convulsive sort of noise, a throaty gulp that promises nothing good, and Min tightens his hand around his until hyung's arm twitches and his back arches off the driver's seat. "You're hurting me."

"You didn't finish," Min says, loosening. It's easy enough to see that there's something else hyung should say. Sometimes hyung is like Joon-young in this too, in the cysts that form around their thoughts until Min takes a scalpel to them. Joon-young is good at bodies, and hyung at minds. Min is just good at the both of them. "What haven't you said? You might as well say it now. There will be children inside. If it's that sort of thing."

"It's not. It's just -- it's this. I can't look at you and not wonder what it would've been like if you had just told me," hyung says. "That. It's not fair of me. But it's like that."

The look on his face is the one Min's seen so often whenever they talk about personal things. It's a yielding sort of expression, tense at the corners of his mouth and deliberately soft around the eyes. He's always known it as what it looks like when hyung tries to understand him. Pares out bits and pieces of reason and puts them together for Min, fit neatly into blocks. The connections between taking a particular route to work, or preferring a particular kind of coffee, a particular style of kiss at a particular moment.

Min's not sure he's ever put in as much effort for that as hyung does. Why should he? Hyung knows it anyhow. Hyung intuits and reasons and spreads it out in careful logic both of them swallow. Regurgitated sense, like feeding a child, both of them eating up whatever hyung can fit together. It feels right and good to have hyung come to know Min well enough to explain himself back to him, but there are limits, aren't there? There is an end to hyung being so relentlessly graceful.

This is a limit, and hyung can't make anything of this. That's the problem, isn't it? He has that face and he has this hope spread out for Min's answer and yet there's nothing to make of it, no way not to crush it. All the answers are pride or lies or fear, and none of these things are gentle. Especially Min's. He never learned to gentle himself.

"It's nice," Min says finally. "It's nice that you can't take everything perfectly. I always wondered about your temper."

"You knew I had one," hyung says. "It can't be a surprise."

He says it like it's a disappointment, and Min scoffs and puts his head against his shoulder just for the seam of his shirt against his cheekbone, that little slope of his deltoid. "Are you so bothered because you just wonder about that, or are you thinking," carefully measuring his words in slow, strung tones like coaxing the final clue from a client, "if I told you back then, if you would still want to fuck me. Is that it?"

Hyung outright flinches, jarring Min's head off his shoulder. "Yes. That. Yes. Is that what you wanted to hear? That I'm not sure? That I don't know?"

"You would," Min says flatly. Success doesn't taste good. It doesn't feel good. "Because of the context you'd first think of me as someone to fuck, the way you did then. No matter when I told you after that you'd still know you wanted me first. You still wouldn't have recognised me. It wouldn't be that different. Don't you think it's deluding yourself to pretend it would?"

"You're saying I would feel this guilty regardless," hyung says quietly. "You're trying to comfort me. That's your comfort."

Min studies him. "Is it working?"

"A little." Hyung twitches a smile. "A little bit. This is your fate, right? This is how you talk about fate. Just… things that are unalterable. What if you hadn't approached me? What if you told me some other way? Like the lecture I gave, or a conference, if you approached me then. What would you have done?"

He's starting to talk like he's pretending Min's had some other life, pretending things were so different with Min that he could contemplate approaching him any other way, and it's not true. It's just not true. Does he really think there was any gap in Min's mind for the possibility that hyung didn't throw him away? "Don't make me into someone else to make yourself feel better."

"I wasn't --" Hyung cuts himself off. "I suppose I am. You don't want to think about it at all?"

"There's no point," Min says, weary of hyung's indecision. Weary of his own. He misses the hyung he had as a child, an uncomplicated cocoon of support and tenderness and cosseting. He misses being so cared for, so looked after, misses trusting hyung's love for him like a linked pair of hands to boost him high or an arm around his waist to hold him up. He misses that.

But that doesn't mean he wants it back. That doesn't mean he would trade this hyung, this grown man with a penchant for procrastination and tangents and the skin of Min's belly, for that uncomplicated, cocooning, tender, absolute suffocation. He wouldn't, given the choice, and he has it. Isn't that right? He has the choice. He kept it for himself.

"The meaning changes in hindsight. Not the action. Not --" His toes curl defensively in his shoes, and he takes a breath and flattens his feet. "You're so focused on blaming yourself. Why not blame me? I approached you. I offered. I didn't tell you. For years I didn't tell you. I did that."

"You don't feel guilty for it," hyung points out.

"That doesn't make it your responsibility," Min snaps back. "My lack is not your responsibility. It never was. It never should have been and that was never your fault."

It hurts to say. He would like if he could say _you did this to me, you made me this way._ But Min always was at least a little like this. Min's read Joon-young's textbooks. It could have been anything. It could have been the murder, it could have been hyung's in turn. It could have been a fall, or an accident, or some other witnessed death.

It happened to be that one, it happened to freeze in his head and always exist there for him to live again in his dreams, for it to creep into the world whenever he stops paying attention. A glass of wine here, a comparison there, a toy truck by the corner, a radio playing some song even Min can't remember anymore. A clock, a stack of blocks, a tea party.

All these useless primary-coloured objects of a childhood that stopped twenty years ago when hyung picked up that gun for Min's sake.

"Even then," Min says, "you took father's guilt like it was yours. You looked after him and now you look after me. Did anyone look after you? Did you ever have a…" He doesn't know. Not a Ja-hee, that was later. Not a Joon-young. But someone, someone small. Someone who did small things that nevertheless somehow _helped._ "Did you have a Miss Sun? Or was it always all your responsibility, all your fault? Is that what you expect me to allow?"

"I thought I was supposed to be incisive, not you," hyung says. It sounds weak, his hands working in his lap, fingertips worrying welts into the back of his hand. "If I am to act as your brother I have a responsibility to you."

"Obviously." Min offers him the last water. Hyung looks like he needs it. "But I have the skill not to settle for the obvious. Or abdicate my responsibility to you. I have one. As your lover. Don't I?"

Hyung turns his head, the expression on his face complicated by shadow, and he leans over the gearshift and takes Min's face in hand. There's the space of a moment where Min reaches up for his wrist, clasps his fingers around it and watches his face, the darkness of his eyes, then lifts his mouth to hyung's.

Hyung kisses back like it's all he wants, and Min drops the water and squirms to get closer, gear shaft digging into his thigh. Kissing him properly is a tangle across the front seats, Min's arm wound around the back of hyung's headrest and his arm braced on the dashboard, hyung squirming down in his seat and his head knocking against the window when he breaks away to gasp. "We came here for a reason. Min --"

"One more," Min interrupts, and this time he manages to be the one to pull away and slump back into his seat. He doesn't know how people have sex in cars; even this is terribly awkward. His mouth is dry, his lips damp, and he licks at them. "We should go in."

"Yeah. Give me a second." Hyung shakes himself, blinking, and this time when he looks at Min it's tantalisingly like he's not afraid of him. Min never knew what a luxury it was to have hyung easy and relaxed with him until he stopped. "Are you busy tonight? After this."

Min watches him swallow, the way he neatens his hair in the sun visor's mirror. "No. Are you offering?"

"I think so. Yes. If you want to. I don't know how much I'll be comfortable with, but if you --"

"Yes," Min cuts in. He doesn't know how to explain the parade of nightmares that used to cross his mind whenever he thought about telling him, much less somewhere so public. They've lingered long enough. Far more than long enough. "Yes, hyung. You're not a consolation prize. You're _the_ prize."

"Really now? I'll take that as a compliment." Hyung pats his knee and gets out of the car, still fussing with his hair as they walk up to Ja-hee's house.

If hyung cares about his hair again, it's going to be fine. It will be fine. Min will make it so. "It was a compliment."

Hyung smiles at him over his shoulder. It looks real. "Then, thank you."

***

Eun-bok answers the door, a rag thrown over his shoulder and his ever-present pencil behind his ear not ever-present after all. "Oh, hyung. You took forever out there. Don't let the heat out."

Even in the entryway Ja-hee's house is a drift of warmth unlike almost everywhere Min's been, a sensation around him like the pat of Miss Sun's rough hand and hyung's arms and Eun-bok letting Min be his crutch for a few steps when they were children.

"You call him hyung?" hyung asks, toeing out of his shoes and into slippers.

That gets him a long look Min's not sure hyung deserves. "Because he is. Are you here to help?"

Hyung puts his hands in his pockets. "He invited me. Is that a problem?"

Eun-bok's expression becomes even more neutral, a set of straight, forced lines. "I just don't like mixing work and personal business. Come on."

The entire house has that sense of cozened helpfulness, like the very walls would support him if Min so much as thought about leaning. Joon-young managed to avoid making such a house of attachments, but he supposes Joon-young is a stronger-willed person with far less vice for nauseatingly happy children. In the lounge he recognises the weary grad student, the toddler from the hospital is on Hye-jin's lap, and the twins and another child are being supervised at a table by a woman Min doesn't recognise offhand. Half-empty glasses sit between textbooks and small plates of crumbs in a way Joon-young never would allow.

"Hyung, let me introduce you." Eun-bok points them out as he leads Min past. The grad student is Ji-hoon; Hye-jin and Hye-soo are the twins while Baek-jin is the toddler. According to Eun-bok their babysitter isn't like them and not Min's concern. The babysitter doesn't look at all offended. "The mess is pretty bad, hyung, just warning you."

"I put a towel on it!" Hye-jin hollers in protest. "It's not my fault!"

"Inside voice please," chorus the sitter and the twin, and Min focuses on the wreck of the living room. The devastation spans wall to wall, knocked-down books vaguely stacked and floorboards warped and thickly stained, a pair of deep holes skidding at their edges into curled wisps like pencil shavings. Ja-hee's chairs are ruined too, broken-off arms and legs kicked in soldierly lines of chipped paint and splintered particleboard against the kitchen counter, and for a long, lurching moment he forgets about hyung entirely.

A towel really was the extent of what they did to correct the damage and Min feels a strange and inappropriate urge to leave and see her for himself just to be sure she survived after all, as though he should call and -- check. Should hear her.

He can't quite look away from the impact marks, the broken chairs. She was so proud of the chairs. Min doesn't understand why it matters but somehow it does, that she was proud of them and now they are like this.

Hyung squats over the impact holes, touching the dried-in stain. "These need filling. Does she rent?"

"Landlord won't do it," Eun-bok says, hands in his back pockets and his mouth set grimly. "It's up to us. I can fix it but I'm not good with blood stains. You'll do it, Lee Hyun?"

"I can," hyung says. "This is polyurethane, so turpentine and steel wool and I'll have to take off some of the finish. Will it be fine?"

"We can replace it," Min says, looking around. There's no air of neglect like his neighbour's house, but it's messy and too many surfaces shouldn't be as matte as they are. "Are you still on strike?"

"For my place, hyung. I thought I'd do the bathrooms. Can you fix the chairs? You're good at them."

Min wanders over, considering. "I'll need tools."

"I figured, hyung." Eun-bok stretches his neck. "I'll get your stuff. Yours too, Lee Hyun."

Many of the torn-out nails need their fixtures repaired or threads painted with nail polish, and one chair is so unsalvageable that Min uses its parts to replace the rest, a back here or a screw there. The flat metallic smell of blood rises behind him, hyung quiet but for soft grunts and the squeak of his cloth, and that combined with the background talk of children is so familiar that Min has to close his eyes to orient and force himself to be very sure he is not a child anymore.

He leans back on one of the chairs he just fixed, idly testing its balance as he watches him scrub. Hyung cleaned up in their first house, too. On his knees just like this. But he was much smaller back then, the stain fresh. "After our father. Did you clean the new house? If he died in there."

"He did. He did and I chose to," hyung says. He sits back on his heels and looks up at Min. "The police finished documenting the scene and I told my foster mother I wanted to do it myself. It got me away from everyone telling me they were sorry or asking how I felt. There's a lot I don't remember of that time, but I remember being glad it was quiet. Ah, speaking of that time, there's something I want to ask you. If answering it means you won't come tonight, I'll understand."

"Asking doesn't guarantee an answer," Min says warily.

Hyung shifts on his knees, nodding, and looks up again. "What happened? After he took you. What happened?"

Min doesn't like to think about those days. "Not here. I can answer, but not here." He doesn't want to gamble on whether the others can't hear or won't interfere.

"All right. Can I ask you again in the car?"

"If it's that urgent." Min considers him. The lovely angles of his face, that mole Min likes so much. Speaking of the car -- "We didn't resolve anything."

Hyung goes back to scrubbing. "I don't think there's anything to resolve. I have problems with this. We know that. I want to try. We know that. You haven't decided. We know that. I want to --" He looks over his shoulder at the door, the drifting chatter. "You know what I want. What I hope I still want."

"I want to, too," Min says quietly.

"Don't sound like that," hyung whispers, and his eyes are wide like Min hurt him but his mouth is half-open like he wants Min to keep going after all. "It makes me think about the car. Before we got out of it. Picking up where we left off."

"You don't want to think about it?" Min leans back against the counter, nudging a chair aside with his hip. "I'm sure there's a room with a lock somewhere here."

"Not here," hyung says emphatically. "No."

Min shrugs and turns back to the broken chairs. "Keep thinking about it, then."

Despite the tension it feels good to be doing something with him, to know he's there if Min wants to look at him, and Min finds the work easy enough to slip into, focus there when he reaches for it, and only realises his neck hurts when he finishes, sets the last chair upright, and straightens.

He doesn't groan but it's a close thing, and he gathers his tools back in the box and gets up. Hyung's still working on the floor when Min looks at him, steel wool wrapped around his fingertips and his expression intensely concentrated.

Min starts sweeping the mess, splinters and dust and flakes of paint. It takes three passes to make sure he catches everything, and he extends it to most of the room, filling and emptying the dustpan with the detritus of crime scenes and a house so lived in Min has no idea how they don't run away to get some air that isn't so heavily laced with whatever it is that makes it feel like their mother. Feel like those times sitting beside her with those gifts on her lap. That was only a roomful of that feeling, in close quarters, and even in memory it's an overwhelming pang. This is an entire house of it made for someone else, and all it does is make his mind spin around the way Ja-hee said _I would've taken you with me._

How would it have been if she did? If he grew up in a place like this. With someone like her. Min's sure he would still have worked hard, but perhaps --

Hyung's wrong to ask if Min wonders about how things could have been different. He's wrong. Of course Min thinks about what might have been if people were faster, or braver, or smarter, or surer. He thinks about indecision. He thinks about Joon-young's seeming lack of it. He thinks about that first hug she gave him, her arms banded tough around him and the way her thin undershirt hadn't been enough even inside, let alone outside in winter. About how it never occurred to him until now to wonder if he should have offered her something, kept her nearby and brought her more things, if he should have taken that hug and paid it back. If he's been in debt to her all along and never realised.

He thinks about growing up in a house like this. Min wants to say he would have hated and resented it and hurt everyone until she threw him out, but he knows he also would have come back. She would have taken him back, he's fairly sure; she's a soft touch. He doesn't know how many times it would have taken to stay. Maybe as many as it took. He doesn't know what it would've made of him to grow up somewhere his defining quality wasn't the loyalty of staying but of coming back. It might have made him someone different.

Perhaps nothing different at all. Perhaps all the same. Min doubts Joon-young would have let her, and that's it, isn't it? He wouldn't have let her, and so it remains only a half-baked fantasy because his mind has nothing better to do than invent things that hurt him, as though there aren't enough of them already.

He finishes sweeping, dumps the last bit of trash, and starts on the kitchen. This is nothing like the neighbour's house, or the flat Eun-bok shares; this is piled rinsed-but-unfinished dishes and mugs turned upside down but stained by tea and coffee, a counter messy rather than dirty, and he spends a good few minutes wiping the mugs clean with vinegar and salt. It feels good to do something so simple the way the chairs felt good. Min's always liked the part of home maintenance where he can tighten a nut or adjust a wire and things work again; it feels like finding the exact argument for the exact article that will win a case just so.

Chun-seok calls him cutthroat, and vicious, and an asshole, and by his gentle, tepid moral standards these things are true. But Min thinks if he bothered to explain this way he would understand why Min likes being those things.

He turns around, teatowel over his shoulder and mug in hand, to find hyung watching him and the bloodstains faded to a shadow that could be anything -- spilled coffee, an untimely splash of water. It's good work. Eun-bok might know if Ja-hee has coarse sandpaper and finish on hand. At least a basic mechanised sander. "What?"

"No, just … you looked happy. I don't see that often." Hyung smiles, broad and sweet, and Min finds himself smiling back. "I don't know how to patch this kind of flooring. I can sweep it, though."

"Eun-bok said he could," Min says, and puts down the mug and kneels to examine the damage. Hyung really did do a good job. Most of Min's experience is with fresher blood and shittier flooring, but whoever did this house originally hired someone who knew what they were doing. He likes unexpected competence, and it's even more obvious after hyung brushes off dust and cleans the holes. "I don't have time to do something this deep. Not properly."

Hyung kneels down opposite him. "How do you know this? From him?"

"More or less. We moved around. Mostly landlords he knew, or who wouldn't mind a few lost records or cash under the table." Min studies the edges of the holes. "We got used to fixing things. I liked it," he says, perhaps unnecessarily, but hyung nods. "Objects are simple."

Hyung makes a considering noise, one of those condescending little bounces of his head. "Simpler than people? Figuring out their levers?"

Min gets up, annoyed by hyung's assumptions. He's practically invited them with letting hyung know so much about him, but the easy way he asks as though the answer is obvious still nettles him. "No, that's easy. People expect so much for so little, or so little for so much, but they're predictable about it." He folds his arms around himself. "I used to know the predictable things without caring about the results. Now sometimes balance matters. Balance is the hard part."

"Is that why you're here? Balance?" Hyung rises to his knees, hands spread on his thighs. "Or was it a favour?" It's the same way he kneels when he's blowing Min, when he leans up and whispers against Min's stomach how he won't even have to lift a finger to make Min come down his throat.

Min takes a sharp breath at the sight despite himself. "A lot of people ask me for favours I don't owe." The question sticks. He forces it out. "Why are you asking?"

"I want to know more about you. How you think. What you expect of me."

"And?" Min says.

"I like it." He gets up, dusting his knees, and glances over his shoulder. "Do we have a moment?"

Min raises his eyebrows. "There's no schedule." Joon-young would have put the twins to bed by now but he knows why Ji-hoon doesn't bother. They're both very light sleepers. A helpful trait in an emergency, absolutely intolerable the next morning. Min's glad he won't be here for their whining.

Hyung stares down the open door, the chatter along the hallway. "Do they know? That you -- your preferences." He touches Min's hip, rubbing the skin above his belt through Min's shirt, his body angled to hide it. "Do they know?"

"She knows," Min says. "But it's not a good idea with the children."

"For what reason?" He frowns, searching Min's face like it's _Min's_ fault. "Do you think they need to be protected from us?"

"Even I know," Min says, "why Hye-jin's younger twin doesn't talk. It is related to this. Can you picture it?"

Hyung drops his hand and steps back. "Well enough. Is that why you wanted to do it in the car?"

He smiles at the look on hyung's face. Sometimes hyung behaves as though everything that hurts is boxed up behind bars or in books, something to be figured out, squared like a sheaf of paper and stacked away. Maybe for hyung it is. But Min's watched a lot of hurt, over a long time, without the benefit of a prison table and handcuffs.

Sometimes Min feels like the eldest, the one to hold out his arm across his chest and stop hyung from running across the road without looking both ways. "Partially. You can kiss me later," he promises. "That's what you wanted to do, right?"

"It's what I've wanted to do all night," hyung says.

Min watches him kneel and stack the books, gaze lingering on the stretch of his shirt across his shoulders, the fresh transparency of fabric and all that promise of skin. He thinks about touching him. He thinks about putting his hand down that slight gap at the back of his trousers, under his underwear, and making him go panting to his hands and knees. He thinks about sitting hyung back over his knees, how he would shiver and ride his fingers. He thinks about the others if they were to be discovered, and how angry Ja-hee would be at him.

He goes back to clearing the counters, cleaning out grout and scrubbing stains off the draining board and stove and the side of the refrigerator.

"Wow, that looks a lot better. I can work with that," Eun-bok says, propping his shoulder on the doorframe, slouching with his hands jammed halfway into his pockets. Ja-hee calls them nuthuggers and complains he'll castrate himself, but if Eun-bok were inclined there would be other reasons. Like that soft conversation he heard once while Joon-young bathed him and Min was cleaning the rangehood, Eun-bok's colourless _I got hard_ and Joon-young's specific, short quiet before he said _I did too._

Other reasons. "Did you finish the bathrooms?"

"All of the upstairs except the bedrooms. Hyung, see me for a minute."

Min dries his hands and follows him into the hallway, conscious of his nailed shoes and hyung in the room he just left behind, the lack of door and echo of wood flooring. "What is it?"

Eun-bok leads him further away and down the hall to the back door's coat room, a cold draft tickling Min's ankles as he steps over piled shoes. The window in the door to the hall is clear glass. They can see if someone's coming. Good. "Hyung. Are you okay?"

"It's gone eleven and I'm cleaning someone else's kitchen. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Hyung. I didn't ask for sarcasm." Eun-bok ducks his head. He's short enough that Min gets a good view of his roots. "I did ask you not to make this harder for me. What are you doing with Lee Hyun?"

"What do you think I'm doing?" Min's careful to be even and level, to be soft rather than to whisper. A closed door is no guarantee. "Debauchery? Dousing him with vinegar?"

Eun-bok's shoulders rise and fall with his sigh. "The old man told me to watch out for him poking around and trying to find out about us. He is poking around and finding out. He's been asking for records. A lot of records. Orphanage intakes, things like that. _My_ intake. Maybe the others too. So I need to know. Hyung. Are you okay?"

Oh. Eun-bok's offering to protect him from hyung. From Joon-young's favourite, for Min's sake. That's what this is, isn't it? This is a declaration of loyalty as much as any sworn oath.

Min wants to sink to the ground screaming that he doesn't fucking understand how paying him back translates into more attempts to put him in debt. He refrains. Barely. One of the pairs of shoes is studded with spikes. Falling on it would hurt. "He must suspect a mole," Min murmurs back, ignoring the offer. He can't bring himself to acknowledge it. It never happened. Eun-bok being that stupid didn't just happen.

"Looks like it," Eun-bok says. "What are you doing with him? The old man says you're being erratic. Not yourself."

Min breathes in through his nose. It doesn't hurt to have confirmation of Joon-young undermining him to the others. It doesn't hurt the way it should, the way it did when Ja-hee told him. It's just an ache to add to the pile of reasons why Joon-young won't take him back, the reasons why Min wouldn't try, the reasons why Joon-young wouldn't try, the reasons why Min wouldn't take him back. A neat little foursquare of distance pulling his life apart at even, parallel seams.

"It's as I said." He pauses deliberately, watches Eun-bok's face go still and form the very picture of resolute neutrality. "Dousing him with vinegar."

"Vinegar, hyung?" Eun-bok says, polite despite the sardonic tilt of his eyebrows.

Min raises his eyebrows in return. "If I confirmed dousing him with an alkaline body fluid, would that make you happy?"

Eun-bok's eyes widen and he looks Min up and down, mouth twisting before his face smooths back into that careful lack of expression. "It's not my business."

"But?" Min prods, and Eun-bok relaxes so obviously when Min steps back against the wall that it's hard to reconcile him with the person who fell asleep in Min's car. He doesn't like the idea that fucking a man makes him suspect in Eun-bok's eyes, but he'll take a little tension if it means Eun-bok still talks to him.

"Be careful. Just… the old man's been weird about him. Do you think --" Eun-bok stops himself, clearly holding back more that he wants to say.

Min turns on the lights, opens the outside door and gestures him out.

Eun-bok nods and follows him to the swingset, taking a seat on the largest. "We didn't have these in the orphanage." He has to fold up his legs to swing but not as much as Min would. It strikes Min, sometimes, how much Eun-bok _wears_ what was done to him, in the skinny jeans and turned-up cuffs and long-sleeved close-woven shirts.

Joon-young wears it like that too. They didn't starve him, but he starved nonetheless. Ja-hee has it around the eyes and neck, and Ji-hoon's breakability is palpable across a room. Hye-jin's obnoxious chatter doesn't entirely cover the way she jitters worse and hunches sleepily when it's time for her methadone dose.

Min, on the other hand, doesn't have anything like that to wear. Just a tailored suit and a briefcase that hurt his hand at first. Just hyung and Joon-young.

"What aren't you saying?"

Eun-bok grips the chains either side of him and looks up at the trees. "I don't know what the old man wants with him. Nothing I hear from him says he knows either. It's not good when he doesn't know what he's doing, hyung. It's not good."

Min sits next to him, the seat smaller and the joins pinching his thighs. Made for a carer and a child, maybe, or a sibling and their burden. Even here the way Ja-hee loves the children, puts them above order and cleanliness, is obvious in the well-used trampoline, the swings, the tub of sand. The balls scattered on the lawn.

It's both nauseating and ideal. Min remembers losing balls in the backyard with hyung too locked up to find them for him, remembers instead digging a stick through turned dirt to investigate maggots. So much life under the ground, so squirmy and easy to kill. And, too, the rot of the dead, how its eyes sagged in the skull and broke open with a prod to teach him their own wafting flavour of decay.

"He doesn't want to kill him," Min says, and because this is Eun-bok, not hyung, not Ja-hee, not anyone else, but Eun-bok, who knows, who _saw,_ who kept his secrets for more than a decade, and this one is just as ugly: "He wants his opinion."

"On what?" He doesn't look over.

Min waits him out, but Eun-bok still doesn't look, or ask why. He doesn't ask how. Sometimes Eun-bok is his favourite. "Whether the death of his father worked out for the best. Something like that."

Eun-bok does look at him then, something complicated in his face, and down at the sparse patch of dirt under his feet. "Do you know what he'll do if Lee Hyun says no?"

He doesn't. "Do you?"

"No. This is bad, hyung. I don't know if you know, but he's angry with you."

Min knows. How he knows. His belly still twinges deep in the muscle when he stands up wrong or laughs. "Isn't that my problem to handle? Tell him that. It hasn't anything to do with you. You're not responsible for my mistakes."

"Ja-hee told me you ended it." Eun-bok folds his arms close around his chest, fingertips white under his arms in the evening chill. "I never managed that with mine."

"I wanted it," Min says. "You were a child. Our circumstances are different." He's not sure he wants to know the things Ja-hee tells Eun-bok. She speculates like hyung speculates. "What else did she say?"

"Not a lot. She needed someone to talk to about it but there wasn't much new to me. I really don't know if you telling him no is stupid or impressive, hyung."

It sticks in his head. Someone to talk to. Someone who already knows.

"Would…" He's unpracticed at asking for personal favours. Through work, yes. For a case, yes. To get his way, yes. But not for hyung. This might be his first favour he's asked for hyung's sake, and he phrases himself carefully. He's not sure how to ask for things from Eun-bok specifically. "If Lee Hyun needed someone to talk to about it as well, would you be that person? What would make you willing to be that person?"

Eun-bok makes a disapproving noise. "Why would he need to talk to me? How many people have you been telling?"

Min shrugs and folds his arms too, holding his jacket closed. "Only the three of you. I haven't told him the majority of it. Just some. What he is to me, what I stopped. I don't think he's taking it well."

"No shit, hyung," Eun-bok says. "I guess I could. Nothing that'll give him or you up. I won't volunteer information."

Every one of Joon-young's children knows the value of their own loyalty. "I'm not asking for that. Just be someone who knows. Who isn't me and busy with a pack of brats."

"They're not that bad, hyung," Eun-bok says.

Min swings sideways, digging in the heels of his shoes so he can lean over and meet his eyes. "Your reference for this comparison is… what? Hellhounds? Cuckoos?"

"I don't care how many times Hye-jin says fuck or how many mugs Ji-hoon forgets to put in the dishwasher." Eun-bok's voice is too quiet for his attempt at mockery, and Min lifts his heels and swings back to vertical, his legs dragging in the dirt. "She tells them she loves them and they just say 'I know'. They're not even grateful."

"They should be grateful," Min says.

Eun-bok shakes his head. "I don't disagree. But I don't mind either."

The quiet is fragile, punctuated by cold seeping through the chains and pooling in Min's knuckles, the lights in a house where love is taken for granted. Knowing someone else finds it uncomfortable in the ways Min finds it uncomfortable makes it easier to think about going inside on his own merits rather than waiting for hyung to get impatient. "I'll tell him to call."

"Sure, hyung."

Min's not sure how to make the offer, if he has the right to make it. If he can follow through. "Do you want something in return?"

"Don't get yourself killed," Eun-bok says, and tugs at the chain above Min's thigh, swaying close. "You should stick around to defend us in court."

He isn't bracing himself against the sliver of intimacy where their shoulders collide. He isn't scratching at his sleeve, or rubbing at his arm. Disparaging words or not, the evidence that Eun-bok trusts Min enough to let his touch linger is a complicated pleasure like running his fingers through Ja-hee's clean, dry hair. "Who else would? You should go home."

"I will." Eun-bok stifles a yawn. "Do you mind dropping me off at the train station?"

"Not at all," Min says, and means it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience with this chapter being so late! Next one should be quicker. <3 I really welcome all your thoughts!


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovely fellow fans! It has been FOREVER! 
> 
> I'm so sorry about the delay, this one took a while to work out; I've been sort of chewing on it for ages, and I think I have it down, but please let me know in comments if the connections aren't clear. You might have to reread the last few chapters to get a sense of where I was going with all this, I'm afraid, but hopefully it does make sense as a narrative and emotional direction.
> 
> It's so good to be back!

Hye-jin sends them off, her twin planting a kiss on both of the toddler's round cheeks and calling herself his aunt. In the car he's quickly asleep between Ji-hoon and Eun-bok, drooling. The twins they left with the babysitter to manage their methadone allocation, and that detail made hyung look at Min like there was something to discuss. Min doesn't know that there's anything to discuss. Cases like the twins are what Ja-hee is for.

"What's his name?" hyung asks.

"Seok-jin," Ji-hoon says. "He's three. His mother's dead." He sounds like he needs a cigarette. 

"Ah. Condolences," hyung says.

"Not necessary, thanks."

Hyung glances over at Min, clearly expecting something again, and Min only shrugs. He doesn't know Ji-hoon himself, just what the others say. Min knows he's a graduate student, a single father, a friend to most of the others their age. When he lived with Min and Joon-young he had a tendency to lie on the floor and allow himself to be dragged to and fro except where cigarettes were concerned. For a lighter held out of reach he would deign to crawl outside under his own power.

So much has changed between then and now. Back then Min was still in the first year of high school, Joon-young was a night labourer on a new highway project, and between Min and another a little older than him -- Seung-jin? Min can't remember his name now -- they fed and clothed the younger ones while Joon-young was away. Ji-hoon was a hindrance who let the children sit on him instead of telling them to cooperate and refused to chew or swallow anything that wasn't nicotine. When Joon-young came back he found how much weight Ji-hoon lost, decided against intravenous feeding, and handed him over to a tax-shelter orphanage run by a mob friend of his.

Min doesn't know how many children Joon-young has these days. He doesn't know how often he finds new ones. Back then it was five or six a year. These days with Joon-young's moods and the number of orphanages willing to hold space for Joon-young's acquisitions after the original closed down a few years ago, it could be higher. Probably is higher.

He doesn't care to know more. Joon-young's albatrosses aren't his and never have been.

Ja-hee's house is closer to Eun-bok's than Min's and it doesn't take much more silence before they're on the express route. Ji-hoon's asleep too now, circles dark under his eyes. He's still very thin, snores rasping through his nose. At least that's the same. 

Eun-bok's awake as far as Min can see in the windshield mirror, his phone casting vague pink highlights on his face. His eyes must still be too sensitive to tolerate a proper backlight.

"Hyung said something was bothering you," Eun-bok says. "Lee Hyun."

"A lot of things bother me these days." Hyung smiles. It's thin and sad.

"He helps," Min breaks in, careful not to take his eyes off the road for too long. There's a less traffic now, but still too much for distraction. "To talk to. I thought you could try."

"I don't doubt Eun-bok's a good friend to you. But there is a problem," hyung says, crisp and polite. "I'm not in the habit of taking personal favours from professional associates. Especially in a criminal taskforce."

Eun-bok clicks his tongue and shrugs, his expression apologetic in rearview.

"There is one favour you could do me," hyung says. "If you were so inclined. You could tell me exactly how you came into the care of Attorney Jung's guardian. That would be helpful, Detective Choi."

"You just said you don't want my help."

Hyung makes a raw, low noise. "It took an hour to clean that floor. It is almost certain that he ordered Jo Jong-woo to murder Officer Sae. What he did to Attorney Jung --"

"You should argue for yourself, Consultant Lee." Eun-bok sounds very calm to be interrupting someone like hyung. 

Calmer than Min himself could manage, and he tries to loosen his grip on the wheel, maintain a steady speed beneath the limit. He's never liked this kind of conflict. Conflict he doesn't care about he enjoys. He likes speculating on the ins and outs of other people's petty escalations. He doesn't like this knifelike edge of wondering what will be expected of him in turn now that Eun-bok knows how much hyung knows.

Hyung withdraws, turning back around and facing straight ahead, his fingers lacing in his lap. He sounds brittle. "He murdered my father and stole my brother. I can argue that much."

_Stole my brother_ still rings so sweetly and strangely whenever hyung says it, a quick flash of remembrance that hyung thinks Joon-young stole him, that hyung didn't give him away. He's still not entirely sure if it's true, but he likes the idea. He likes the conviction of the way hyung says it. _Stole,_ like Min was worth stealing and is now worth keeping.

"Sounds like you should leave our Eun-bok alone," Ji-hoon says sleepily from the backseat. "Who are you, anyway? You came with Sun-ho."

Hyung looks over at him and Min isn't sure how much to say. Ji-hoon's a little like Eun-bok but he handled it differently. Min's never seen him respond to being touched. Back then Min experimented with dropping all sorts of things on him and only heavy impact and fire made him bother to move away, but at the wrong phrase he'd crawl under the table and smoke for days. Joon-young used the phrases often, taught them to Min. He said it kept Ji-hoon out of trouble. They linger on his tongue in this moment. _What can you ever get right. Why don't you listen. Aren't you a waste. You're a burden._

Min swallows them back. "Sometimes I'm fond of people." He can say that much. "He's such a person."

"Yeah, never," Ji-hoon says, sounding as though it'd be derisive if he weren't exhausted instead. "That floor though, dude. Brutal stuff."

"You still don't sleep," Min says, checking his face. "Shouldn't you be done with the doctorate soon?"

"Little thing called a research dissertation getting in my way. You don't sleep either, hypocrite."

Hyung chuckles. "You're an academic?"

"I sleep," Min mutters.

"Nah, you don't." Ji-hoon stretches, angling carefully around the toddler drooling on his arm. "Yes, I'm in the ivory tower. Social work. A soft science, I bet you'd say."

"No bet," hyung says. "I lecture in criminal psychology. The physics faculty has nothing to do with me."

Ji-hoon laughs, a threadbare noise. "Aren't people pathetic?"

There's a quality to the way hyung listens now, something guarded, watchful, and Min glances over at him, recognising the neutrality of his face, the tilt of his head. He's hearing something that falls into an expectation, a data point to curl string around in preparation for forming the outline of a whole person. "Do you expect otherwise?"

"Not really. I'm going back to sleep," Ji-hoon says, and the car is quiet until they arrive outside Eun-bok's block of flats, Ji-hoon hauling himself and the toddler out without a word and Eun-bok squeezing Min's shoulder and following.

Min waits for them to gather the child's bags out of the boot, watches them ascend the stairs. Eun-bok waves and Ji-hoon condescends to give a lazy sweep of his arm.

With them out of the car it's just three left. Him, hyung, and the quiet. It was tense with the others in the backseat but it's a different feeling now, air scraping potent over his wrists when he shifts his hands to let the wheel spin back to neutral.

Hyung's watching him. Min can feel it, and he tosses him the keys. "You drive."

They switch seats, chill snapping against Min's ankles when he shuts the door. "You look at me like you want something."

"I told you what I want," hyung says, and Min glances over to find his eyes unsettlingly intense, like Joon-young at his best. "But it's true you don't sleep. I think I'd rather that than fucking you. I'm not that selfish."

Min manages a smile easily enough. "I don't mind."

Hyung's still watching him. "Why are you introducing me to these people? For years you never talked about anyone but Lee Joon-young, and now you're showing me names and faces. What changed?"

"You don't know that he's Lee Joon-young," Min says instead of pathetic, sentimental things like _you know you're my brother now_ or _I want to tell someone about you,_ things that might lose him whatever shreds of hyung's respect he has.

"I'm not asking you to confirm," hyung says steadily, starting the car. "I will handle that. I am asking you what changed. I thought you were closeted. I understood that. Now I don't know what you want them to know."

Min isn't sure what to say. When hyung puts it like that, it's foolish. The entire enterprise was foolish. A mistake. "I just… wanted to show off."

"Show off," hyung muses, and then he makes a surprised noise. "Show _me_ off?" He sounds incredulous. Pleased. "You _want_ to show me to your friends."

The urge to say something horrible to that face of open hope, something that will make hyung stop the car, something like _what else would I? your ugly faces when I fuck you?_ is almost unbearable. Hyung would leave if Min said that. "You're here. I might as well."

"You know that's not true," hyung says, so gentle Min's fists clench. "You're making sure they see me. That they know my name. Why? Are you taking out insurance?"

"It's not like that," Min tries. He sounds thin, faltering. The kind of voice he'd never accept from himself in court, much less in front of a client. But this isn't a client, this is hyung, and hyung's heard worse from Min. Still.

"You introduced me to Officer Sae," hyung says. "She's been your sister all this time and you told her. That meant a lot to me. But you didn't have to. You could have said I was a friend. You could have said you knew me through work. You could have said I was a stranger. You didn't. You primed her to assume I was your boyfriend."

Min's tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, warding the headache he can feel building in the roots of his teeth, the bridge of his nose. "She's a soft touch. Tell her who you are when you need her. Give her a sob story. Either she helps or she passes you to someone who will."

"'When'? What are you planning to do?"

_The inevitable,_ Min almost says, thinking very hard of Joon-young's tongue protruding from his mouth. How he might struggle, bug-eyed, not expecting Min to so much as dare to think _he_ would be worthy of being _his_ end. 

Min dares. Joon-young raised him to do no less. "Nothing."

One way or another, one or the other. Hyung shouldn't be the one to do it, but he might. Joon-young doesn't deserve hyung, but he thinks he does. The possibilities shouldn't ever intersect, not ever. He doesn't want that look on hyung's face, the one from after they came down the stairs. Once was enough.

"Sun-ho. Please don't do anything rash."

He doesn't _want_ to. He wants to and he doesn't want to, a throbbing headache of equal decisions with equal weight. He would rather not. It's Joon-young and he'll always need him, and even with that fact there's the other, too: everything comes back to hyung or Joon-young, and Joon-young won't give in. Won't ever give up. He waited for hyung as long as Min did. Longer, now. Dreamed of him as much as Min did. Wants him as much as Min does. Min can't picture giving up on hyung -- why should he expect it of Joon-young? Especially now, with hyung so smart, so pretty, as sexy as Min used to think Joon-young was.

Min imagines them together and finds himself absently tracing it on his trouser leg. Hyung's raised thigh, the specific look of concentration he gets in bed. Joon-young fucking him, the corners of his mouth upturned and his his head hanging low to watch hyung's every expression. How he'd fuck into him slow, and hold himself still until hyung told him to move, demanded it, thumped him with his heel. How Joon-young would pull out and sink, slowly, all the way in, and grind his cock inside him as a reward, the way he does when he's pleased.

Hyung would so please him, Min's sure of it. Hyung is gorgeous, experienced, assertive about sex, sure of what he wants and how he wants it. Joon-young would have fun with him. Joon-young would like it enough to smile at him. Maybe even laugh for how good it is. Make a joke. Kiss him and mean it.

Unlike Min. Training wheels. Practice, and there it is, the hurt. The cavern, the dragging softness of it, the strain in his throat as though to let himself give in would be to split himself apart into a flood of misery to be filtered through a sieve. Scraps of fabric and an endless howl, abandoned as Joon-young's dregs.

Distraction. He needs a distraction. "Will you need to go back to America for the semester?"

"Probably," hyung says after a pause much, much too long. "I do have pre-existing obligations and I don't want to burn my contacts. Three months to wrap up everything."

A quarter. It shouldn't sound like much. It isn't. They've spent more than a year apart before, and before that, fifteen. But he thinks about going back to the distance, not having him in the same city, same room, same _bed_ , without even Joon-young as a stopgap against the ringing echo of the two gunshots that murdered their mother and her murderer in turn, and it's already more than he can stand. "You're coming back."

"Yes." He sounds so sure. "I'm saying goodbye to my life to pick up an old one, and that's going to take time. Shipping my things, transferring my job, cancelling the rent on my flat. Handling contracts. Afterwards I'll be back for good. No more leaving." Hyung makes a collecting noise, a subject-changing noise, like putting it on hold. "It used to be I didn't understand why you always took leaving so hard. There was a lot I didn't put together."

He smiles over at Min, of all things. Changes lanes and checks the wing mirror and flashes a smile at him, like Min is someone to smile at automatically. See Min and smile. He didn't smile at Sun-ho like that. He doesn't know why he's surprised but it's still new, after all this, to find hyung paying attention to him. To Min, specifically.

Hyung isn't even gone and Min already feels what it's like to miss him, strung through the knuckles of his hands, the chill on his forearms and down his back. "It's fine. The interval."

"I want to professionally," hyung says, "and personally. That doesn't mean I want to leave you alone with him. Going back on your word now will only make it harder to set boundaries later. You haven't since, right?"

Min was trying to distract himself but here hyung is, bringing it up again. Perhaps there's no avoiding it. "No," and he holds his tongue on the rest of what he could say -- the fantasies, the daydreams, the longing. How it hurts not to hear from him, how it hurts not to visit him, how it hurts to look at his own cupboards and realise he doesn't know where anything is because his house was never just _his_. It's his and Joon-young's.

"I'm not saying you have to avoid him entirely. Just don't go back on limits you've already set. I've seen how that goes. It doesn't end well."

"None of this," Min says, as bitter as he feels, "will end well. It's him or you."

Hyung makes a sharp, high noise in the back of his throat and Min knows he understood. "Do you feel you've chosen me?"

He's surprised enough to look over at him, at the downturn of his mouth in profile, the heaviness of his eyebrows. "Yes," he blurts. It feels right to say, the first right thing in a while, and he keeps going, encouraged by the softening of hyung's jaw. "Of course. Why else would I be here?"

"You have a particular face when you think about him. You think about him very often. I don't know if you need more from me." He glances over, brows fixed low. "Repudiating him isn't the same as choosing me. I worry about you."

It was hard to be in her house for so long. It was hard to keep himself collected, polite, dutiful. It was hard to hear the familiar drift of the children chattering and the unfamiliar way the sitter spoke to them as though it mattered what they said. It was hard, all of it, and he misses Eun-bok. It was hard, but he tried. He did well. He thought he did well.

This sounds like he failed, yet again, at a test he didn't know he was taking.

"Am I so pathetic to you?" Min asks, patience worn thin. "You're sure I'll crawl back as soon as you're on the plane. Aren't you?"

Hyung inhales sharply. "It doesn't make you pathetic to go back to an abuser. It makes you a human creature of human habits. Some manage the first time. Some don't. I'm concerned that --"

He's had enough. "I lived for twenty years without what I wanted most in the world. Do you think you knowing who I am puts me out of practice?"

"That's not fair, and not what I meant," hyung says.

"It's what you said." Min doesn't intend to dig at him like this but he does it anyway, and he eases his shoulders into a slump. "I don't know how to be fair."

Hyung's hands overlap on the wheel as he takes the roundabout's slow curve, and he's quiet long enough that Min grits his teeth and links his fingers in his lap, trying not to think about being alone. "I'm trained in observation and emotional detachment from a subject. It's still difficult for me to speak calmly. For you I think it must be harder."

Even these few words make him feel a little better. At least hyung is still paying attention, isn't pretending they're the same person or the same as then. Back then it didn't much matter what Min felt; it was hyung doing everything regardless. "The only easy thing is fucking you."

Hyung tips his face, lets him see the edge of his smile, the curve of his jaw and cheek. "There's a reason for that. You have both a dysfunctional personality and a stressful lifestyle. It's nearly guaranteed that sex is a coping mechanism. That's why I worry about leaving."

To Min the solution is obvious. "I can go to a bar again."

"No," hyung says immediately, too fast to be anything but the first thought that came into his head. "I understand that it isn't fair for your circumstances. I know. But I am selfish enough to ask."

"You don't want me to have sex with him," Min says, watching him closely. "You don't want me to have sex with anyone."

"Other than me. Yes. I realise what I -- I do realise. But I am asking."

He hasn't gone that long without sex for a decade. Long distance was good, will be good again, but not enough. Min doesn't think it'll be enough. "I refuse."

Hyung's mouth contorts, turning down so hard his zygomaticus stands out. Min wonders if hyung is eating, if this is affecting him more than he shows Min. He doesn't like the idea of hyung keeping secrets from him. "Well. I did only ask."

"You can tell me not to," Min offers, unsure if he's testing him, unsure of the answer he wants.

"No, I'm not interested in giving orders. Particularly not about this," hyung says. "Will you let me try to be enough? I can make more time for you but it depends on your schedule."

"I haven't taken a day off in a while," Min says. This much he can promise.

"Good. All right. And if you do go to a bar, don't hide it," hyung says, abrupt. "If it does come to that. Go to the right bar, remember you ought to be treated well, tell me about it. Don't keep it secret from me. I'm tired of secrets between us."

Min doesn't bother to stop himself smiling. "You won't be jealous?"

"Of course I will," hyung says. "I'm already jealous. But if you are truly so habituated to sexual contact, I will accept it because of the situation. Regardless of my feelings."

The way hyung says it, forced and unnaturally level, makes him realise something is wrong, that perhaps it isn't as funny as Min thinks it is. Not for hyung. "What are they?"

Hyung scoffs and taps his thumbs on the wheel. "You never ask me that."

"I'm asking now." It's true. That doesn't mean hyung has to point it out.

"I worry," hyung says. "I know a little of what you're used to accepting. I want to think you know better. I want you to have better. But it could be someone who treated you with absolute kindness and it wouldn't matter to my feelings. I would feel the same."

"Because I'm your brother?" Min asks.

Hyung's shoulder jerks in a stifled flinch. "You said I was what you wanted most. Right? You meant me."

Min considers telling him to pull over but they aren't that far from hyung's hotel. He'll have to live with hyung's profile, the flashes of expression. It's frustrating not to know what hyung is thinking. "What else would I mean?"

Hyung doesn't answer for a while, focused on an exit, and his hands move smoothly around the circumference of the wheel, thumbs lifting as it spins back in his palms. Min learned from Joon-young but hyung drives like a graceful star of an old movie, relaxed in his seat. "It's like that for me too. I thought about you every day. I always ate alone but I didn't feel alone. I always saw you and our father at the same table, eating with me. Every day I saw you laughing and smiling, both of you like you were then."

Their father, laughing? It is a fantasy after all. "What do you see now?" Min asks.

"Nothing." Hyung pulls into the queue for self-parking. "When you're not with me you're alive elsewhere. There's no need to keep company with your ghost. But our father would not eat with someone who -- is like me. My imagination doesn't stretch that far. So I eat alone and I will go back to New York and I will eat alone there too."

Hyung blinks hard, stretching his neck and his throat a column of angles, and Min realises with a cautious wonder that separating for so long won't only be difficult for Min. Hyung doesn't like it either. That's what this means, doesn't it? Hyung is choosing to go, but it's not hyung's preference. It's hard to think of hyung doing things he doesn't want. Min always thought of him as above that. But perhaps even hyung must, sometimes, and they have this in common too. "You don't want to go."

"I don't," hyung says immediately, and rolls down the window for the parking ticket, handing it to Min to keep. "It's the last thing I want to do. It's best for the long-term but in the short-term, absolutely not. Do you think I always want to do the things I do?"

Min remembers when hyung stood on a stool in the kitchen, apron on and knife in hand while he prepared Min's breakfast, and said their father wouldn't get it right anyhow and to let him sleep, it was a day off. "You liked looking after everyone," Min says. "When we were small."

Hyung rolls up the window, interrupting a cold blast of wind. "You couldn't and he didn't so I did. You were right earlier. It had nothing to do with me. I just had to. There wasn't anyone else."

Min only meant to rile hyung up but now he thinks about it, tries to picture their father making breakfast, hanging laundry. He tries and he can't do it; the closest is their father eating with a newspaper folded open beside him, their father unrolling a pair of socks. Of course their father couldn't, wouldn't, do anything like that. Of course it would be terribly done, burnt or raw, coffee scorched and their clothes mildewed in the machine. But the way hyung asked if Joon-young did everything for him. The way he reacted to the question of money.

Perhaps he wanted better of their father, back then. Perhaps he didn't say to leave their father alone not because he had it in hand, not because he was more capable, not because he wanted to do it, and not only even because he was protecting Min. Perhaps it was about the reality of defaulted responsibilities. Protection from refusal, from their father's withdrawal, his guilt and grief. Perhaps it was from the truth Min realised years ago, years after: there was no reason hyung should have carried so much for so long other than their father's absolute indifference.

Hyung had to have known their father couldn't love them both, even then. 

"You wanted me to fuck you," Min says. It's important somehow to say that, to let the words float in the air a little. He wishes he could be more sure of hyung. For all that hyung _says_ so much, Min still isn't sure what to say back. "You let me draw you. I dangled information for a long time, but you didn't have to invite me to your room every time. You don't have to come back." It sounds too much like the question it is.

"No, I chose. I choose." He sighs and turns off the ignition, keys rattling in his palm. "I chose you in that bar. When we have sex I don't allow it for your sake, or for the sake of some greater good. Or because I didn't have any other choice." Hyung looks over at him. "I don't like what we did on the highway but I chose that too. I know you would have stopped if I told you."

He wasn't sure himself, until now, that he would have. Min doesn't have words for this bubbling relief. Hyung says _we_ , generous as ever, but Min knows not to take his generosity on its face. "Am I still welcome?"

Hyung's watching him like he knows what Min is thinking. "Do you believe me?"

"I want to," Min says, and takes the keys, unsurprised when hyung looks at the camera in the corner of the lift and squeezes Min's hand behind his back, unsurprised when they get inside hyung's hotel room and he kisses him against the door, kisses him and strokes over Min's chest. But there's none of the urgency Min expected; it's a kiss like being watched, and Min draws back as far as he can, unsure if to push him away. "You're distracted."

"I am," hyung says, and there's something rueful about the wrap of his hand on Min's hip, the way his thumb presses the edge of Min's belt into his skin. "Unfortunately."

Min takes a deep breath, trying not to bristle. He has work tomorrow. Hyung has a loose schedule but Min doesn't and he's tired enough that his tongue presses thickly at his teeth when he tries to speak. "Then what am I here for?"

"Don't say it like that," hyung says quietly. "That's not all this is. You know it isn't. I wanted to talk."

"I have work tomorrow. I'm tired. I don't want to talk," Min snaps. He wants to hurt him with every word he says, wants to get a rise out of him, something flashy and instinctive like a punch or a scream. Something that would make energy skitter under his skin and wake him up enough to help Min stave off how much he wants to touch hyung and bury his hands in his hair and kiss him, all his desires helpless and instinctive as a bunch of filings crowding up on a magnet. He buys himself time with taking off his tie, his jacket, unbuttoning his shirt.

Hyung's quiet for too long, his breathing steady and careful on Min's collarbone. "All right." He pats Min's waist, his hand warm. "All right, get in bed. Let's sleep."

Hyung strips down and pulls the covers back, getting in. For a moment he leaves them down, settling himself, and Min stops to watch him, how he's so sure inside his skin. It's simultaneously annoying and attractive, how much hyung is hyung. He would recognise hyung anywhere, clothed or unclothed, disguised or not, just by looking at how much hyung fills his own body, like he knows where his skin ends and everything else begins.

"Come here," hyung says, patting the bed, and it's still a revelation to be invited.

Min gets in, awkward in his underwear and undershirt. The smooth sheets are an unthinking pleasure of sensation, the pillow soft against his cheek. He's going to fall asleep right away if he's not careful. He's tired, so tired, and he knows he's fraying, that his control is nothing like Joon-young's to begin with. "What did you want to talk about?"

Hyung pauses too long again and Min settles despite himself, closing his eyes when hyung still doesn't say anything. When he does it's faint, sleep-hazy in Min's ear. "Just one thing. Do you still hate me? The blowjob in the car. Was that because you hate me?"

"I don't hate you," Min yawns, conscious of hyung watching him even as their bodies brush and he's conscious, too, of how warm hyung is, how good he is to touch and be close to, the sleepiness lapping at his ankles, his shoulders, gritting his eyes until he can't open them anymore. "I don't even hate him. I should, to kill him. But I don't."

"Do you think it'll come to that?" Hyung sounds soft, strange. "Are those the terms?"

Min doesn't understand why hyung puts on these airs sometimes, pretends he can't see the fucking obvious. He sighs, dreams beginning to take colour under his eyes, vague shapes of people from long ago, fragments of nonsense conversation. Everything's always so blue-toned, like there's an entire summer sky stored inside his head. "I said I chose you."

***

He wakes up to a notification from his phone, the rattling buzz of vibration on a table; he feels stiff and dirty when he sits up, his undershirt twisted into a strangle beneath his arms. Min claws out of bed and turns on a lamp in the sitting room but it doesn't stop his eyes stinging at the brightness of his screen, the way he has to close one and squint to read.

_We got a date!!!!_ Chun-seok. Chun-seok, who must've let him know as soon as he heard, probably from Attorney Kang, who would've woken him up to tell him and now he's waking up Min.

It's five, in any case; he should get up, go to work. Find out when the date is, what else might change. Contingency plans, in case the ones they have aren't enough.

His eyelids are too heavy and Min forces himself not to look back at the bed with hyung in it, forces himself into the bathroom, kicking off the socks he fell asleep in. The floor doesn't wake him up like he wanted it to and he longs for a day off, for a decent stretch of sleep, for some kind of resolution that isn't red-stained hands and the hopeless tangle that passes for Min's feelings.

The Chairman Kim case will have to do. It'll just have to do as a substitute, and he stands in a cold shower until he's awake enough to be annoyed by chattering teeth and numb toes and the way his fingernails turn stark blue and white, skin mottling. The joints of his knuckles hurt when he flexes his hands, worse still when he makes a fist. When he turns the water hot they still ache, but it's tolerable. Joon-young used to say it was a sign of doing well to have aching hands, mostly because his always hurt in the center where he braced the butt of his knife to finish a stab. A bad habit, but one Joon-young refuses to give up. Refused. Min doesn't know what Joon-young is willing to keep anymore.

Coffee and ordering breakfast on the telephone, all backgrounded by the lack of movement from hyung, the lack of hyung's voice telling him good morning, telling him about his day. It's the silence of no hyung, no Joon-young, for all that hyung's in the bed, his shoulder bared, the nape of his neck wrinkled. Min knows how soft it is to kiss.

It's too quiet and Min debates waking him, then decides it doesn't matter; hyung can go back to sleep later, and he puts down his mug half-finished and goes to him, goes to touch that strong neck, the almost-bristle of his short hair.

He never pictured having this, in the years they've already had. Hyung asleep in a bed they share, trusting him enough to stir only vaguely and press his cheek into the pillow when Min touches him. Hyung in a room that smells like him, that looks like he lives there, inviting Min in. Taking him to bed, sleeping naked with him though he knows.

Min strokes the warm curve of his neck and scratches gently at his scalp beneath his hair and thinks about the cost of the hotel room. How close Joon-young is to knowing, if he doesn't already. The difference it might or might not make, in the end. His own house, which he likes for its studio and privacy but is his through false identity, not any particular attachment.

He thinks about hyung leaving and hyung returning, and the flood of light on the stairs of their father's house. What it might be like to share a kitchen, a bedroom, a home.

Hyung makes a sleepy noise, fingers stretching against the sheets, and it's terribly easy to kiss the breadth of his shoulder and shrug his robe to the floor, to think of him as someone Min wants, wants to touch, wants to wake up with kisses to his spine and cheek and ear, someone Min can touch like this. He can, can't he?

He could have this. All of it. Couldn't he? If he could just -- would just --

His fingers shake. His voice shakes. He's too busy focusing on being precise, on not being mistaken. "Hyun."

Hyung kisses him back, slow and tantalisingly sloppy, his jaw working as he blinks and focuses. "Sun… Min."

Min shakes his head. "Yours," not quite correcting. Not quite hoping for the pleasure of being listened to, but he wants to hear it, he wants it in that rough, rawboned semiconsciousness. He wants it with hyung looking at him like this, the corners of his eyes thickly yellowed and summer freckles lingering on the tip of his nose. 

"Mine," hyung says with that same confidence he wears like he has a right to it, and Min kisses him, sucking in a surprised, giddy breath when hyung rolls over and takes Min with him.

Min watches the tips of his hair as his kisses wander away down Min's jaw, lifts his chin to make room for the insistence of his mouth, and feels a contentment of contrast, a pleasant frisson from the grip of hyung's hands and the softness of his lips on his skin.

That in the car was a shadowed thing with very little of the things he usually likes about sex with hyung -- his face, his sounds, the look of his body. He's not sure, here in the faintness of light spilling from the lamp he left on in the other room, with his hips protesting the spread of his thighs, why he did it at all. Because he wanted to, presumably, but when he thinks back he remembers just the darkness of hyung's lap and the way he gave in, the shift of his arms over Min's head and the twitch of his crumbling self-control. 

Min did it because he could. Just because he could, and hyung knew that too. Min was angry when hyung did it to him; it's no surprise now that hyung got angry when he did the same thing.

"Sorry," Min tells his hair. "For the blowjob."

Hyung lifts his head, blinking, his surprise so obvious Min wonders for a moment if he's being sarcastic until he remembers hyung is usually like this in bed. Open. Showing him himself. It feels strange now. "Thank you. Don't do it again."

"Don't let me again," Min says, and he pulls his wrist out of hyung's grip, strokes down his back. Touching him is still good. 

"I won't if you won't." He groans, leaning into Min's hand, and though he's awake the shift of his shoulders is weary, the line of his mouth tense. Min has the urge to tell him to stop, to put one of those bathrobes over him and put himself around him, holding it shut with his limbs. 

He would be angrier that even half-asleep hyung has to try to do it, but he can see the effort, can feel it in the way hyung's fingers flex and his breath is so deliberately slow. "Is it that hard?"

"A bit," hyung says. "I like sex with you but I also remember being responsible for you. Having sex is in spite of the Min I remember. It's not comfortable."

Min considers his face and reaches to take hyung's free hand. But this time, instead of hand to hand, he takes his wrist and firms his grip and squeezes a little too hard. He watches the relief in hyung's face, feels the quick breath he takes. 

"That would help too. If you topped. I don't expect it to always be like this. I'd rather it weren't." He pulls his hand free and rubs his eyes. "It's just for now."

"But it would help," Min says. 

Hyung took responsibility for Min back then. Perhaps Min can take responsibility for him now. 

He pushes him off, and down, and straddles him in a careful perch on his thighs. When he pins his wrists and kisses hyung hard, his mouth eases under his out of the stiff, dry shapes of before. "I want you like this," Min tells him. "Do you still trust me?"

"Yes," hyung says. He's still tense, watchful, tendons standing out in his neck, but his belly gives when Min puts his palm there. "I trust you."

"Then you should hold still." He reaches for lubrication and a glove, careful with himself; he's healing, but stretching to get the tube in his fingertips hurts.

Hyung shifts, wrists lifting from the bed before he sinks back. "You're still injured. I can do it."

"I told you to hold still, hyung," Min says.

"Don't call me that."

"I'll call you whatever I want to call you." That, of everything, makes hyung's cock shift, and Min sets about fingering himself open, watching hyung relax and kissing his chest just to feel him breathe against his mouth, the fast thud of his heart. He watches, too, the shift of his elbows and the flex of his hands, the way he strains his neck to see between Min's legs. "Do I need to tie you up?"

Hyung makes the sort of sound he made when he bent over the chair, licking his lips and meeting Min's eyes. "Maybe. I trust you," like he's telling himself as much as Min.

Min takes off the glove and pulls his tie out of the mess of their clothes. His usual windsor is too easy for someone so strong, and Min delights in making it more difficult, binding his wrists twice, then thrice and finishing with a neat knot.

The blue looks good on his skin, hyung's flushed cheeks and thickening cock even better, and Min pulls the glove back on, carefully matching finger to finger and rolling it down his palm, hiding the tinge of pink. It's not important. 

Hyung's more responsive now to whatever Min does, like being tied up concentrates his attention, and his thighs shift restlessly while Min plays the loose fingertips of the glove over his rim, flirting with the prospect of pushing in three instead of two, wondering how much will be too much. It's been a week and he only struggles with the limits of his reach. He doesn't ache so much either; the bruises on his stomach are easy to ignore. 

He distracts himself from the edge of pain, how the shuffle of squashy fingertips inside him makes his mouth water like he's about to be sick. "I think I won't fuck you until you say, what was it --"

Hyung throws his head back between his elbows, making a face like he doesn't want to smile. " _Sun-ho._ "

"Ah," pretending to remember, pretending to ignore the way his name sounds muffled against skin. "'Dongsaeng, please fuck your hyung'. Something like that."

"I won't," hyung says, laughing midway through. He's flushed, breathing hard and bright-eyed; he's gorgeous all over again, reminding Min of the pictures, of the many, many more he could draw and pass to him just for the way he grins and admires himself in wonder. "You'll have to make me."

"I can," Min says, more confidently than he feels, and plays a fingertip inside himself, lazily pressing his free fingers against hyung's thigh until hyung complains low in his throat. Two goes easier now. It's better. "You just have to ask, hyung. Ask your dongsaeng."

Hyung shakes his head, nudging Min with his knee. "You get off on this. You like this."

"Of course I do. You were the first I wanted," Min says. "I wanted you before I knew what I wanted."

That makes hyung's face go solemn, the opposite of what Min intended. "You mean you always would have approached me. One way or another."

"Probably." Min puts in another fingertip, grimacing at the feeling of the glove; hyung's too coherent for his liking, too serious, and Min wants to be too honest, wants to say too much. Hyung's always been another heart, walking around where Min can't see him, can't find him, can't touch him. 

Fucking him isn't going to be like being fucked, he knows that much, but it is like touching half of how things could have been. He puts in the third finger, pushing gingerly to make it fit, and hyung draws a loud breath, eyes fixed so low Min shivers with the knowledge of how closely hyung is watching. It makes him bold. "Should I try a fourth? I didn't get around to it for you last time."

"You were busy," hyung says. He's smiling again, the untanned skin below his chin especially pink. "I don't hold it against you."

"Still, I should keep my promises. Especially to my hyung. Right?" Min adds more lube, catching himself under the balls and lifting. Hyung makes a jerky, pained noise at the new view. "Breathe, hyung. Hold these for me."

"I," hyung says, and brings his arms down, chest rising and his palm warm and holding, other hand pushing awkwardly at Min's belly, and Min waits, his fourth finger tucked in and barely pressing. Hyung shuffles his hands to avoid cutting off his circulation, but still his fingernails are too pale against his skin. "Sun-ho. _Sun-ho._ "

"Ask for it," Min coaxes, liking the uncomplicated power of being able to make hyung feel good just by letting him watch. Just by telling him to watch. "Ask me. Should I?"

"Please. Slowly. I want to see," hyung says, pinker still, ruddy all down his chest and his gaze fixed on Min, open-mouthed and his elbows high, peering under his hands.

Min doesn't clutch at his own cock, but it's a close thing the way hyung's words are a close thing. It's not quite what Min wants. It's not quite what he asked for. "And my name?"

"Min," hyung says, frowning, and he licks at his lips like he ate something foul. "Min. I -- Sun-ho."

"That's fine," Min says, brighter than he feels, and presses his fingers deeper, knuckles pushing against hyung's thigh when he draws them out almost entirely. He knows hyung can see his off-white glove, can hear the squish of nitrile and lube just as well as Min can. He aches, a warning klaxon, but he doesn't feel the split, fine-haired hurt of a fissure, a danger. Just caution, the kind that says to be careful, to warn Joon-young to be slow today, to make time. But hyung isn't Joon-young and if Min brings it up, hyung will stop. Min doesn't want that.

He can do this. Min peels off the glove, reaches carefully for a condom, lets hyung watch as he takes hyung in hand and rolls it down.

Hyung groans, his thigh jerking against Min's hip, and Min feels a thrill of power skate up his spine like a pair of fingers. He wants to arch into it like a cat, wants to rub his body along his cock until hyung whimpers. "Ask me, hyung. Ask me to fuck you."

"Fuck me," hyung says. "Please."

"You can do better than that," Min tells him, smiling at hyung muttering curses. This feels good and familiar, the way things used to be, and having it back is almost a triumph. "You know what else you can call me. It doesn't have to be my name."

Hyung whimpers after all and Min looks up and finds hyung's expression helpless somehow, like Min's trussed him up in chains and pillory, not a silly few twists of his tie around his wrists. Min hasn't even bound him down to anything. 

He can move around. He's free to kick Min away and off. He's free to use his teeth on the knot; Min left a pull end for practicality. He can do many things. He can tell Min to stop. But hyung looks at him, breathing hard, red-faced and his cock gorgeous and his brows drawn down, and it's like Min's broken him. It's a face like their mother's funeral, their father forgetting to call a plumber, the way he looked when he talked about Min in the early days.

Min's torn between liking it and the impulse to put something over his head so he can't see it anymore. "You don't have to call me anything."

"Dongsaeng," hyung says, his mouth twisted and his body curling, almost throwing Min off. "Dongsaeng. Is that enough? Is it?"

He's not sure how to comfort him, and he reaches for his cock, his thighs, stroking over his hips. "You don't have to." It feels useless. He got what he wanted, but he also didn't. He didn't want hyung to say it like that. Like he hated himself and Min too. He wanted it like the car, and Min wonders if this was for nothing.

Hyung draws a deep breath of the kind that makes his chest lift, then another, and another, until he blows out a breath and turns his face away, lashes glimmering. "If I ever can, I will then. But if I can't, don't push it. Please don't push it from now on." He pushes weakly at Min's belly. "Leave it up to me."

"I suppose it's too early," he says, unsure how to respond. Should he be glad hyung isn't saying he never will? But he isn't glad. He's disappointed. He was looking forward to having sex with him like this and he thought hyung wanted it, at least. But everything about the stiff tension of his shoulders says Min hurt him. Min didn't mean to hurt him.

"We can work something out later. Just not now." Hyung clears his throat, a disgusting noise of too much snot and phlegm, and pulls at the tab with his teeth, wriggling his hands out of the tie. The paler stripes on his skin are so pretty that Min's distracted enough to stare at how hyung rubs them, how they colour and pinken into faint marks just as pretty. "I can't do it like that. Do you understand? Come here."

Min doesn't understand but he goes where he's told, settling stiffly on his side, and he doesn't quite understand either when hyung puts an arm around his waist and shuffles behind him, chest to Min's back and their knees folded together. It presses hyung's still-stiff cock against his skin and he wonders if hyung means to fuck him like this.

"I want to look after you," hyung says, his cold fingers reaching between their bodies, and yes, that is what he means. 

Min's never had sex like this before. He thought he was decently versed in sex, his knowledge broad if limited, but he's never had Joon-young behind him like this, so much of their skin touching, their bodies so intimate. This is too gentle for anything Joon-young would do.

He hasn't really done this with hyung, either; he's had hyung on his belly, of course, he's pushed up a thigh and leaned over him and fucked him, but he never crawled behind him and put his hand on his hip and wrapped gently around him. He never thought to.

They don't even sleep like this. They sleep facing each other, with Min on his back and hyung sloppily configured against him, and it's fine like that. He likes it like that.

This is so much body, so suddenly, and Min doesn't know what to do with it, if to gorge on feeling so much of him, if to swallow the rising nausea of his world being so full of hyung's skin and scent and touch and the shallow press of his cock against the cleft of his arse, the sweat-stick of his thighs against Min's. 

"If you want to be my dongsaeng, let's do it gently. Like this." Hyung kisses his nape, his hair, his ear. Min can smell salt. "I always looked after you. I can look after you again, as -- as I am --" He breaks off, his hesitance terrible to listen to. 

Min can't stand it. "I can hardly feel anything," he snaps, more waspish than he means to be. He can't feel as much of him as he'd like, the movement of his hips maddeningly short, making him so aware of the ride of his cock. Hyung has hairy shins and soft inner arms, a muscled chest and the stomach of someone shortchanging themselves on food, his breath damp and so, so welcome. He wants to know everything about hyung. He does. He just didn't think to have all of these things, at once. It's so much.

"That's not true," hyung says and kisses his nape so tenderly Min doesn't know how to bring himself to escape the chance of another, and another, and another, not if it brings with it another shift of hyung's hips, another sound against his neck. Hyung's voice turns brisk and stiff, his arm shifting to his hip like he means to pull away. "It's not compulsory. I just thought, if I can't do that, at least I can do this. It was just an idea."

Min puts his hand over hyung's, gripping hard and a kind of panic lining his lungs. He doesn't want hyung to leave. He doesn't want his back to go cold, to feel the separation again. Isn't this what he wanted, a creature of two heads and one body? Isn't this togetherness, this bare seam of air in their smallest gaps, exactly what he always wanted? 

He didn't know it was possible to feel so close to someone in so many ways. There's so much of hyung. He can feel the softness of his belly. He can feel the prick of his pubic hair. He can feel how hyung would pull away and not even hold it against Min. It makes his eyes hurt. "I can feel you. I was lying. I lied."

"Like this," hyung says again, voice so terribly soft. "I want to take care of you. Even if I can't say it yet."

"Not always," Min says.

Hyung kisses his hair. "No, not always. But for now," and Min reaches back and between for his cock, hyung helping him align, and he breathes out with the press of it inside him. It doesn't ache as much as he was expecting. 

Hyung's hand comes over over his stomach, aligning their arms the way their knees are aligned, and he hums at the fullness of his cock half inside him, the full-body warmth of him. It's gentle in a way he can't explain, the movement of his cock shallow and the press of his lips gentle on his nape. It's nothing like Joon-young's restraint. There's no restraint in hyung, just lazy almost-thrusts and his arm around him and his loud breathing. He's never felt safe with a cock inside him before. 

Min closes his eyes, relaxing into being a whole again, half of hyung and hyung half of him and all together again.

***

He stirs to a shake of his shoulder and shrugs it off, finding dim blue around the edges of the curtains and his body tucked in warm blankets to his chin. Hyung's dressed and sitting on the side of the bed, his hand on Min's chest, his face so familiar and handsome that Min wants to smile. "You fell asleep."

"Ah." Min remembers hyung fucking him, but that's all. Stretching only hurts a little and he can smell coffee. "Did you come?"

Hyung shakes his head. "I'm not interested in somnophilia. Are you in pain?"

"Not really," Min says carefully. "Why?"

"I found blood on the condom." Hyung clasps his hands between his knees, the set of his face troubled. "You should have told me."

Min swallows down protest, his hackles rising. Even after all these years, the idea of hyung being disappointed in him stings something wretched in him, pulls up a sore fury that he struggles to choke back. "I knew what I was doing."

"I didn't," hyung says. "That's the point. I didn't and if I did I wouldn't have risked making it worse. You knew I wouldn't. So you didn't tell me. Right?"

He sits up. "It's getting better. I'm fine." He sounds petulant. He sounds six.

Hyung pats his knee through the blanket. "Next time, tell me. We don't have to have penetrative sex. We don't have to have sex at all."

Min shrugs unease. He knows hyung is different from Joon-young -- well he knows -- but in this, too? Joon-young never outright _said_ , but he contemplates only rubbing off against Joon-young, only touching him, and knows instinctively that it wouldn't be good enough.

It wouldn't have been. 

Hyung reaches for his face and Min holds still, watching his expression as his thumb touches his chin, his mouth, settles into a two-finger grip on his jaw. It's a strange thing, his face, very focused and very distant all at once. His skin smells like lotion, the pads of his fingers soft, the cuff of his shirt very white against his forearm. "It's hard to reconcile you. Then and now. I remember finding coins for you in the couch cushions. I remember brushing your hair and tying your shoes and wiping your face when you ate."

He touches Min's mouth again, thumb slowly moving from one corner to the other, and his eyes are very sharp when they meet Min's. He's looking at Min the way Min looked at him when he was asleep. It's that look. Like Min means something.

"I also remember the sound you make when you're wrapped up in what I'm saying to you and you're about to come all over yourself. I remember how much I liked that. Sometimes I came to that sound because I knew it meant how much you wanted me. How much I wanted you."

"Past tense," Min says.

"Not entirely." Hyung smiles at him. It's a tired thing, but it shifts his eyebrows like it's real. "I remember thinking as a child that you were my responsibility, and wishing that you weren't quite so much. I also remember wishing as an adult that you were more my responsibility, because you were so stubborn and I had to convince you of everything." 

His mouth crooks, showing white teeth and something so real in his face that Min doesn't understand but knows he craves. "Hyung?"

"Yes, and no," hyung says, and kisses Min, a slow, breath-catching kiss that has Min propping up on his elbows to stay upright, and kisses him again, still so slow, so close, so thorough. 

Min wants to clutch at him, wants to ask him why he's kissing him with the care Min gives expensive inks. It's like the end before Min told him, when they were comfortable and Joon-young wasn't impatient yet. It's one of those kisses. But more than anything he wants to kiss him back as long as hyung will let him.

Hyung lets him until Min's dizzy and air is a hitching fire in his chest, stays close and breathing just as heavily as Min, his arms a welcome cage and his knee weighting the blanket over Min's thighs. He's so close, just like last night, but in such a different way. Sexual, too, but this is cleanliness and cologne and all of hyung's self-possession.

"What was that for?" Min asks, not quite daring to open his eyes. He's not sure he wants to see hyung's face. He doesn't want to risk his pity, his farewell, if he's changed his mind, if the unfinished conclusion to hyung's thoughts will hurt. Especially if it will hurt.

"I wanted to," hyung says. "Are you too sore?"

Min's ears heat, his skin hot under the blankets. "Do you want to fuck me too?"

"I want to eat you out," hyung says, so frank Min flushes helplessly. "But I can't take my time. You'll be late if I do."

"Do it anyway," Min says.

It's worth it. Hyung is always worth it, and Min puts an arm around his neck, kicks down the blankets and makes room for him. He learned not to show himself like this for Joon-young a long time ago. Joon-young didn't like the way it looked; it made his face pinch and his temper go short, and sometimes they wouldn't have sex after all. 

Hyung likes it when Min offers sex for the sake of sex with him. Min's sure of that. Hyung likes it when Min does this, opens his legs and deliberately bites his lip and grips his shoulders, when Min takes the opportunity of hyung's fumbles in the nightstand to pull him close for a kiss that makes his neck arch and his shoulders squirm against the bedding.

Joon-young told him once not to behave like a slut, with fingers that bit into his elbows and made his hands spasm, his narrow teeth clenched and his eyes wide with meaning. Told him it wasn't acceptable. Told him the others wouldn't understand, told him it would get them noticed. Told him that if it was necessary, Joon-young would take care of it, and all Min had to do was focus on school and work and let Joon-young do the rest.

With hyung, Min wants to. He wants to offer. He wants to give him everything, whatever else it makes him, as long as he has the chance to say _I'm yours_.

He doesn't hesitate to turn on his stomach for him, to sink back on his knees and brace himself open for the dam. To brace himself, too, for hyung's gentle touches holding it against his skin, for the hard press of his tongue, the tightness of his own grip on his cock. For the way hyung grunts and pushes his face closer until all sensation is the press of his cheekbones and the lick of his tongue and the dam stretching over Min's skin and the sloppy sound of hyung stroking himself. 

Min wonders who he pretends Min is. Sun-ho? Min? Is it really pretending to think of either of them? "Hyung? Which name are you thinking about?"

"You're mine." His voice crackles, and he clears his throat. "I told you. That's what I'm thinking about. No names. Just … this is mine."

"Do you like it? That I am yours?" Min ventures, and he knows there's a high chance that hyung will say yes, that he does want Min, but he can't help tensing.

Hyung licks him again. "Look at you. Such a --" He hesitates and licks him again. "Such a handsome dongsaeng. Of course I like it."

Min's startled into a whine and chokes back another when hyung holds him open, fingers flexing into the bedding. He tries to look over his shoulder at him as though it would help decipher what is going on with hyung, what rules hyung is following to shy from even saying his name when Min is about to ride him but have no problem with saying these things while fucking him with his tongue. "I don't understand you."

"You have three minutes left to come if you're going to get to work on time," hyung says.

Min pulls away from the touch of his mouth, desperately confused. "So that's it? You're just encouraging me?"

"Shouldn't I?" Hyung puts his hand on his thigh, tugs him back and talks against the dam, his lips moving like he's kissing him, and Min bites his lips shut on a moan. "It doesn't arouse me, but it doesn't hurt that you like it. If that's your concern. I know you like it."

"I don't know what your limit is," Min mumbles, his shoulders tense. He feels like he got no sleep at all, and he wants to come, but -- but hyung is more important. This is more important. This feels like letting, the way they promised each other not to just let each other do things. "I _said_ it was a catastrophic moral objection."

Hyung sighs. "And you were right. Can I just do this for you?"

"Not if you don't mean it," Min says. He's learned to care about that. He doesn't know if it was hyung's influence or Chun-seok's or whoever else, but he's learned to care about meaning. Joon-young said what he wanted Min to assume he meant, and it was fine like that. Other people aren't like that, and Min used not to care about what they meant so long as what they did was what Min wanted.

But this is hearing this from hyung's mouth in the middle of sex without Min having to ask for it and it's good, it feels good, but it's not enough. It's not enough that it feels good. It's not enough that hyung said he thought Min was handsome.

"Hyung? Did you mean it?"

"We're out of time," hyung says after too long spent just … holding still, his breath on Min's skin, and when he gets up, patting his thigh, Min wonders if he did something wrong. If this is a bad kind of caring and he's got it wrong again.

He's still hard but it doesn't matter now that hyung didn't answer, and he gets out of bed too, showers with a shaky numbness in the pads of his fingertips. He avoids touching his skin as much as he can, scrubbing his lathered palms over his arms and reminding himself not to bite his lips, not to frown himself into a headache. It shouldn't be so important. It's just hyung moving things along. It doesn't matter that he didn't mean it.

Telling himself all these things doesn't make it hurt any less, and he kisses hyung goodbye but it's stilted, awkward and painful as it's almost never been, and Min hesitates. 

He's going to be late, but he hesitates. "Is it always going to be difficult?"

"Well, you haven't made up your mind. It's not up to me. Is it?" There's something Joon-young about his tone, the insidious certainty of it. Min knows that technique. He uses it all the time. Joon-young taught him. But he didn't think hyung would use it on him. Hyung softens, more like the hyung Min knows. "Maybe you just need time. Maybe we just need time. You might as well go."

"Kiss me again," Min says, standing his ground. He's not sure what's happening. He just knows he doesn't want to leave this way, with the memory of that clacking not-really-a-kiss still on his teeth. "Properly."

"I'm very frustrated," hyung warns, but he reaches for Min, and it's rough, enough that Min almost drops his briefcase, but it works. It works, their mouths together, their faces together, the angles they take. Like they remember each other again. It's not perfect but it's better even with the taste of latex on hyung's lips. "You're right. It was worth doing that. Go to work. I'll see you later."

"Tonight," Min says.

Hyung nods and drops his hands, the shadow of a smile around his eyes, stress bracketing his mouth and making him look too much like their father. "All right. Tonight."

***

He leaves hyung and arrives into a long day, a grinding, wearying day for a collection of small reasons that make no sense when he examines them. 

Chun-seok's not there when he arrives, but then he never is; Chun-seok doesn't come in before the others do. He had to get his own coffee, but he always does first thing, because he's usually one of the earliest to arrive. Hyung didn't call him when he ate breakfast, but there's no point calling him like they're still long-distance when hyung is right here in the city. Attorney Kang is too busy to talk about the court date, but Attorney Kang's never had time for impromptu meetings.

Min hasn't heard from Joon-young lately either. Other than the visit, he hasn't called or texted. Hasn't spoken to him, has for all intents and purposes stopped talking to Min, and though he's decided, more or less, has quite possibly decided for years -- 

Even still, he still wants to crawl on his knees to his door and bang on it, begging forgiveness. Even now. Especially now.

Their life together. The way they lived. He wants that. He wants it _back._ Joon-young across from him at his kitchen table with his colour-coded study system, his interest in hyung's books, his air of waiting calm, the way he smiles when Min says something marginally clever, the way he understands Min's frustrations, shares champagne and achievements with the familiar nerve-damaged smile of rebuilding half his face in a night.

He wants him to be there when he gets home, to feed him and look after him and put him to bed. He wants mornings with Joon-young, breakfast and familiar divisions of the newspaper. He wants to visit him in his office and suck his cock, or maybe fuck in his soft white chairs. He wants to text him, to call him, to have his familiar voice, his touch. He wants to walk into that house that Joon-young claims and strip and go to all fours if Joon-young will only touch him, fuck him, press him down and bruise him. He wants Joon-young to brush his hair back from his face and talk to him soothingly. 

Min doesn't know how to live apart from Joon-young when all he's ever done is cocoon himself in his shadow, his misbegotten albatross.

He always thought he was selfish but he doesn't know how to be selfish enough to hang onto hyung, eliminate the competition, get the jumpstart and finish it. He doesn't know how not to break into a sobbing mess and beg Joon-young to take him back, that he didn't mean it, that he'll do whatever it takes if it means he can be Joon-young's like before when it was easy and he knew what to do and hyung never complicated anything with touching Min like he wanted him. 

Nothing about the two of them together, alternating them, hiding them from each other over the last five years, was easy. But Min misses Joon-young. He misses the way they made each other easier, the things about Joon-young hyung soothed and the things about hyung Joon-young soothed. 

He wishes Joon-young cared when Min told him to stop. He wishes he hadn't been practice. He wishes too many things. Impossible things. Min doesn't know how to give hyung up. He knows everything about how to kill Joon-young, and nothing about giving hyung up once he has him, once he's found him, and that's that, isn't it? That's how the choices are. That's what it looks like. Despite everything.

Joon-young would understand if Min explained it. He'd understand the need to kill him.

It doesn't help to know. It doesn't help at all.

***

Going back to hyung's bed at the end of the day has that same lack of ease, that sense of missing a piece from a puzzle, missing a piece of his own foundation, but touching hyung is something Min understands, knows how to lose himself into. He knows how to touch hyung, and clinging to him is a steadiness of his own, even when hyung says he's ready to tell him about his dreams. The ones where he calls him dongsaeng.

"You don't have to," Min says, wary of the line he doesn't understand. How is Min asking for it different than hyung giving it? But it's different to hyung, somehow, and it roils uneasily in his stomach, all the things he doesn't understand. He misses Joon-young. He misses being able to ask him about these things. He misses the way Joon-young speaks, clear and careful, and answers him. Even if it's a lie, even if Min still doesn't know how much Joon-young didn't tell him, it was something. It was always something. Min doesn't know how to ask hyung.

"I want to. So, keep your eyes closed. Just listen." Hyung kisses him again, his hand squirming against Min's belly to grasp hard at the top of his thigh under the blankets, his palm a shock of cold that makes him jump and hyung chuckle. It's infuriating, and he scowls into the dim red-filter of the shadow above his eyelids that is hyung. "So, my dream. A thought, more precisely. I thought about things that never were. What we might have done if you did approach me as a brother back then, if none of it happened. If we were horny teenagers in the same house. If I said yes, like you said."

Min wants to ask if he would have. He knows better.

"I dreamed," hyung says, voice going lower, softer, his breath an anchor against Min's cheek, a sign that he isn't -- leaving, is still there, that this is his weight on top of him, his body, "of if I would take you to an arcade. If you would play a game or three, and I would put in the coins for you. One of those racing games with a chair and a wheel. Have you seen them?"

"I never went to arcades," Min says. Hyung is so close, his voice a lull. He knows this from phone sex, from years of listening to hyung take this particular tone, this invitation, and extend it across hours and thousands of kilometres so Min can borrow his imagination, his surety, and wrap himself inside the way hyung sees him. "I was busy." He licks his lips, enticed. Hyung's _voice_. "I know what you mean."

"It's so loud in there. Everyone so busy and distracted. No-one would hear you yell at the high scores." Hyung's breath travels to Min's neck, his mouth softly obscene against his skin. "No-one would see me put my hand inside your underwear and on your cock."

Min breathes in so hard through his nose it whistles. He swallows. Hyung's mouth is right there, feeling Min doing it. Feeling Min respond. Hyung knows Min likes this, and Min knows hyung knows, and hyung knows Min knows hyung is doing this on purpose. There's no hiding from hyung, not like this. Not with his hand where it is, warm now. Not with his mouth pressed so close he might as well be counting the pulse in his jugular. "Where are you in this?"

"Being a good elder brother," hyung whispers back. "At your side. Looking out for you. Telling you to be more careful. I think you would be reckless."

"Reckless with your hand in my trousers," Min manages, arousal a thick sensitising counterweight to the blanket muffling his legs, and he's unsure if to stop him or relax. "A good older brother jerking me off."

"Do you like it?" hyung asks him, mouth grazing Min's, not quite kissing. Not quite withdrawing, and it puts the sense of him so solidly on top of Min, so solidly close, that he groans. "As a hypothetical reward for doing as well as I knew you could. A high score or two. I would have to be slow. You know I don't like oversight. Or interruptions."

"You never did," Min mumbles, biting his lip at the shift of hyung's hand, nerves strung and fraught. He gasps at the wrap of his warmed-up palm around his cock, awkward under the pin of the blankets as though he is wearing underwear, as though he is sitting in some ridiculous plastic chair in a place full of screaming children. He isn't. But the more hyung talks, the more it feels as though it could have been and the possibility makes him lightheaded and his mouth too wet. "Would you stay there? Jerking me off?"

"I might have to stop to put a coin in the machine. Or a bill, if it takes that long. But you wouldn't take that long, would you? Not when I touched you." 

Hyung's hand is dry but Min is so hard he doesn't want to think about anything else but hyung and the fantasy he offers so easily. It feels good. It feels like if it had been real, in another life. Like hyung might have said yes if Min asked. The idea is overwhelming and impossible. "Don't stop," Min whispers.

That gets him a wavering chuckle. "You'd like it. You'd try to keep your mouth shut. But you wouldn't manage, would you? You know I like to hear you. Everyone would think you were shouting about the game."

Min knows his part in this, knows hyung will do his best but he needs something from Min too, and Min wants to give it to him. He fumbles for words. He didn't think hyung would do this. Take the idea and make it into a fantasy of possibility. He thought he would just tell Min about it. Not put him in it, like over the phone. "Unless they saw. Saw you jerking me off in front of them."

"Yes." Hyung's voice is low, close like a blanket piled high around his ears until it's all he feels. Hyung and his hand and the presence of him. "Saw me touching you right in front of them while you play. If they looked, they'd see me with my hand down your trousers. Wrapped around my dongsaeng's cock."

"Hyung," Min whispers, lifting his head, kissing all the skin he can find until hyung's mouth is right there, supple and comforting, his hand working him steadily in small rubs of his thumb beneath the head. Just like he would have to, to avoid being seen. Just like if it was real. "Hyung."

"Yes," hyung says. "I'd let you come after you won. And I'd wipe your semen on that chair, and everyone who saw it after us would know you came right there for me."

"For you, hyung," he manages. He wants to thrash, wants to squeeze his knees around him and reach for him and press it all into his skin, but he can't, he can't, and the idea that this is what hyung _wants_ to say to him only makes him harder.

"Yes. For your hyung." His kiss is adult and perfunctory and perfect. "Me."

Min comes and it feels so like being on the phone with him that he doesn't even begin to try to muffle himself, just cries out, his breath too hot over dry lips and hyung so, so near, his shoulder hard against Min's forehead when Min grabs onto his shirt heedless of the fresh ironing job. He presses his face into his chest like any of this could make sense if he only burrows into hyung deeply enough, panting. Min doesn't want him to see his face.

"Shh, shh," hyung whispers, his arm coming up strong around his back. "Shh. Talk to me."

He doesn't know what to say. He's not sure there's anything to say. He's calming down but it doesn't help; it only makes what hyung said starker. "Do you want me to talk or shut up?"

"Talk," hyung says, straddling Min's lap. Holding him upright. Holding him. "Always."

"Did you really think about that?" He takes a deep breath. He can't feel hyung's cock. Did hyung like it too? Did it turn him on? Or was he just watching Min make a fool of himself? 

Hyung makes a noncommittal noise. "Most of it. After I cleaned up I was thinking about what if we had been together. If we had, what would be different. What wouldn't be. You meant it, when you said you wanted me first. That was what you meant."

Min squirms out of his grip, tired of having his eyes closed, tired of being coddled. "You were everything. Are you really surprised?"

"No," hyung says. His shirt is crumpled, his hair unruffled. His cock is hard to the sight, an outline in his grey trousers. They strain over his crotch, seams expensive and holding, and Min feels better for it. It's not just him. Even now he's not alone. "Early and unwavering sexual fixations aren't unheard of. I didn't have a sexual fixation, but I did want to look after you. I do want to."

"Is that what this was? Looking after me?" 

Hyung's smile is weary. "You look after me too."

Min doesn't know that it has anything to do with such a gentle thing as looking after anyone, where he's concerned. It's hyung. No-one else should hurt him, should mark him, should bite him. No-one else. Just Min. He's _Min's_ from his eyelashes to his toes to the cock Min squeezes through fabric. This is his. "Then, can I?"

"Yeah. Yes." Hyung fumbles for his trousers, getting them open, and Min struggles out from under him, goes to his hands and knees and presses his face into his crotch, the laundry scent of his underwear in his nose and the hardness underneath a welcome place for his mouth. Hyung touches his cheek, the pads of his fingers cold and careful. "Be patient with me."

Min can't promise he will, but -- "I'll try. Get on with it."

"What did I just say?" Hyung rips open a condom and rolls it down, letting Min watch, and he likes the new colour of his cock under the latex, how it shines like an invitation. Wool rubs the skin of Min's cheek when he licks at the side, zipper teeth a cold kiss to his cheekbone. 

His mouth's too dry and the lack of lubrication makes hyung feel huge, more of a threat, and he spreads his knees and settles, smiling to himself at the sudden clamp of hyung's hands on his shoulders, pressing flesh. 

"Be careful."

"Make me, hyung," Min says, and works his mouth to wetness on the sides of hyung's cock, enjoying the differences as much as the cock itself, the act itself, that this is _hyung_. This is what it should be like. Hyung's fast breaths and whispered curses, the way he scratches his nails in Min's hair and grinds the heel of his hand into his back when Min unseals his mouth with a deliberate noise. Not in the dark, not weirdly anonymous even as it was public, not with hyung restraining himself. 

It should be like this, hyung's eyes on him, hyung not holding back, wanting him and showing it, and Min doesn't bother to hide how much he likes it in turn, greedy for his own name and greedy for hyung's want and plainly, openly greedy for his cock in his mouth. It's everything, to have him. Everything.

"Sun-ho," hyung whispers, smoothing Min's hair, fingers running through it and cupping the back of his head. "Sun-ho. Look at you."

Min can't talk with his mouth full, but he knows what he wants to say with every bit of him, every sparking neuron and circulating blood cell, every stroke of his tongue, all of him tuned to _hyung, hyung, hyung_ and every twitch of his hips and every pulse of his heartbeat in his cock. 

If he could, he would say he is hyung's, and he tightens his grip. If he could, he would say hyung is his, and the eagerness of having his cock in his mouth, warm and wide, makes his chin wet. If he could, he would say he couldn't ever be as good to anyone as hyung is, but he wants to know how to be good _for_ him. Min wants to be his as much as hyung is his, and he shuts his eyes, pubic hair scratching the skin around his mouth, and holds his breath deep in his gut until he's seeing sparks and has to pull back.

Hyung pulls him close again and comes, his arm laid across his back and thrusting deep, his breathing distinctly shaky, thighs trembling.

Knowing he's responsible for it all is such a thrill of success he lets himself grin as smugly as he wants. It's not a disappointment it's over, this time. It's not a disappointment at all. "Hyung," Min says, nosing his cock, liking the sensitised hitch of breath above him, the remnant hardness of him on his tongue. He likes so much about hyung. So much.

"Sun-ho. Gods. Dongsaeng. Sun-ho." His hands shift on his back, dragging Min up into a rough kiss of cupped cheeks and chapped lips. The way he looks at Min afterwards, rubs saliva off Min's chin and throat, is -- it's that look he couldn't catalogue again, that indefinable, open thing, and Min doesn't understand why this is the most naked he's ever felt with his clothes off. 

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, careful not to shrug out of his grip. "What?"

Hyung only kisses him again and Min folds his fingers around his wrist, liking the thrum of his pulse against his thumb and the way hyung finishes with a murmur of breath against Min's lips and a brush of his hand over Min's cock. "You really want this, don't you?"

Min understands, for all the fondness in hyung's tone, that this is something he's meant to be ashamed of. Joon-young always said it as though it was something wrong with him, and it makes him bristle to hear it from hyung too. "It's not like you mind."

"I never have," hyung says. "It was a compliment. Just -- it was a compliment, Sun-ho."

"Oh. Well." He shrugs stiffly. "I'm sure you've had a lot of blowjobs."

"You assume I've had a lot of sex. I'm not actually promiscuous." Hyung kisses him again and gets off the bed, reaching for the tissues on the nightstand and peeling off the condom, his zipper a harsh noise that makes Min remember his aches and nakedness.

"Then what are you?" Min pulls the blanket up around himself, wedging himself within a pyramid of feathers and wrinkled linen. It makes it easier to brace himself against that look hyung still has, how it settles around his mouth and eyes in little wrinkles. It's like he's on the cusp of smiling, like he's hearing the first half of a joke and laughing before the punchline. Min still doesn't know what it means. Does it mean he's happy? Did Min make him happy? 

"Picky and easily bored," hyung says. He looks so put together after he straightens his shirt and ruffles his fingers through his hair, and he sits on the edge of the bed with the room service menu. "You're the first person I've regularly had sex with. The others were for a month at most. Or less. My first blowjob I thanked her in arcade tickets."

Min leans over his shoulder and points to the continental breakfast, unsure what to say that won't sound like he wants hyung to stop talking to him. He doesn't. Hyung says so little about how he grew up. "Solicitation is a crime."

"I realise that," hyung says. "In retrospect I should have asked more questions. There are so many questions I should have thought to ask. So many, and so often."

He's getting melancholy again, Min can see it in his bowing shoulders and lowering head, and Min's sick of his guilt. He used to like it, used to draw it out just to watch hyung squirm and suffer and it still feels good to see, but it's not all he wants now. It's not even half of what he wants from hyung these days. "What if it was me? If I offered. For tickets."

Hyung looks over, something careful in the set of his mouth. "If I didn't know? Or if I did?"

"Either," Min says. He can feel time crawling, knows he should go to sleep, should leave enough time to rest even a little, to shower and eat and get ready for work, that the more he lingers the more he'll have to compress his routine yet again. But he's half-hard and hyung brought it up first. He played pretend first, and Min doesn't want to let go of pretending. "If you didn't know me and I offered for pay. I could have been watching you. Attracted to you. Desperate." It feels stilted, awkward with truth, and Min's fingers bite into the blankets when hyung stays silent. He's never had the knack for this. Not like hyung. "It's not interesting, is it?"

"It's interesting that you don't even consider I could have been desperate for you," hyung says, and Min looks up to find him close and smiling, the menu forgotten on the bed and something gratifyingly heavy about the way he looks at Min. "Enough to offer to suck _your_ cock for pay."

Min's startled enough to fall back to his elbows. He's pleased it's working after all, but he didn't think it would be like this. "Me?"

Hyung chuckles, that strange happiness easily shaping his face. "Yes, you. You know I like how you look." It's gentle for all that Min feels like he's being made fun of. The advantage of doing this on the phone was that hyung couldn't laugh at him. In person hyung can see everything, and despite the blanket Min feels stripped and waiting. "I could have been watching you for a while. Entire terms watching the pretty artist boy. Wondering if he'd have me. How I could have him."

It makes Min flush to think of hyung wanting him like that. Wanting him that much. "I wasn't pretty."

"You would have been to me," hyung says, and Min's so caught in his own fluster that he doesn't register hyung leaning closer until his voice is in his ear. "Perhaps you stayed late to work on a piece and I found you in the classroom, and I came to see you. Confessed that I wanted you so, so much and asked if you would let me suck you off. Just a blowjob."

"Right there?" Min ventures, thinking of it. The easels and how hyung would have to push aside a stool or two to get down on his knees, the smell of paint and the vague sting of dirty turpentine. The windows lining the hallway.

"If you'd allow me," hyung says, kissing his jaw. "Any way you'd allow me to suck your cock, I'd take. Any way I could touch you. I've thought about it before. You in your studio. If I sucked your cock while you painted and tried to ignore me. How you would sound when you gave in and put your hands on me and fucked my mouth." Min can hear his smile, the way his voice changes from playing at fantasy to telling the truth. "I know exactly how you would sound. I like that I know."

He leans into him, hot under his cocoon, and rubs his hand over his own cock, hardening fast. Hyung sounds so much like he means it. Like he'll keep going if Min gave him the chance, and he wonders how far to push, how much not to say, and tries a different angle. "Would I have paid you afterwards? For coming to me and sucking me off."

That gets him a low noise, a hot breath against his ear and hyung's hand working into the blankets, groping over his hip and squeezing. "Yes. I would've asked you to let me prove myself and only then be paid for my efforts. My dedication."

"Please," Min says. It comes out weird, high and breaking in his surprise at how turned on hyung sounds, and he tries again. "Please, hyung."

"Yes. Yes, come here." Hyung tugs at him and Min follows, lets himself be shuffled to the edge of the bed. It leaves his knees spread open and the blanket piling around his waist, and Min watches hyung kneel, right there in those expensive trousers, on this pristine, professional hotel floor. He watches him stroke the condom down his cock, feels the shaky grip of his hand and watches him lick his lips. Watches him wordlessly bend his head and suck Min's cock like he's been working up the spit this entire time, his hand rubbing confident circles on Min's thigh. 

Min grips his hair, ruining the paperlike stiffness in favour of clinging to him and digging his toes into the carpet, aroused and oversensitive all at once. "Would you really, hyung?"

"Yeah." It sounds rough like he'd be hard again if he could manage it, like he'll think about it when he touches himself after Min's gone to work tomorrow, and the plush, easy wet of his mouth makes Min's knees shake. "I would."

"If I told you you were good, would you like it too? Would it make you come?" He's almost dizzy with the idea that though he's more experienced, better at sex, hyung might want his approval the way Min wants his. His, not only Sun-ho, but Min's, too.

Hyung looks up, mouth red, pupils wide and his cheeks just as red. "Only if you were sincere."

"I am," Min blurts, thoughtless and instinctive, gel clumping on his palm when he tries to gather his hair in his hand. It looks long, but in practice it's too short for more than an awkward twist of his fingers against his scalp. Even that is enough for hyung to make a croaky, undignified gulp Min knows well. "You're the best I've ever had, hyung. The best I'll ever want."

Min tries to sound sure rather than overwhelmed with the fact of him, his mouth and his heavy eyes and the slow, prickling build of a second round so soon after the first. Min's not sure he'll manage to come, and he doesn't want to let hyung down if he doesn't. But he doesn't want him to stop either, not when hyung rubs his knuckles between his legs and makes a noise like touching him is the sexiest thing in the world.

Min knows he's too loud, knows he's whining, but he doesn't know what else he can say to hyung being like this, so handsome, so perfect, and Min rides his cock into his mouth, unable to stop thinking about that sound, the steady eagerness of his rhythm. The way hyung wants him. 

Every time he manages to whisper something -- that hyung is good, that hyung is worth it, that hyung is the best he's ever had -- hyung shuffles closer and closer until Min's thighs rest on his shoulders and Min has room to rub his heels frantically on hyung's shirt as he comes. The drawn-out grind of second orgasm is a clamping, taut twist like the drag of Joon-young's hand inside him, but it doesn't hurt, it doesn't feel terrible. It only feels wringing and deliberate and so good.

Min manages a gasp, and another, and thinks of what Joon-young would say, thinks of what their father would have said. He thinks of what hyung's foster mother would say. What all of them would say, if they could see them now, Min's condom full of semen and hyung heaving for air on his knees, rubbing his mouth along his balls like he doesn't want it to be over.

"Hyung," Min says. It's not that he cares, exactly. It's more that he knows hyung would care. Should care. But Min called him hyung and hyung didn't protest, though Min promised not to call him that. He did promise, and he broke it. But hyung didn't object. "Is that fine? Hyung."

"I know who you are," hyung says, voice changing from sexy to tired, knees cracking when he gets up and pats himself down. "It's useless pretending otherwise, right? It's late. You'd better get ready for bed."

Min might be wrung out already from coming twice in an hour, but he knows when something is wrong with hyung. "What is it?" He doesn't like how nervous he sounds. "You liked it. The fantasies."

Hyung stops fussing with his hair and puts his hands in his pockets. "I'm acclimatising to the idea." He shifts on his heels. Min would like his discomfort if they hadn't just had sex, if he wasn't still naked on the bed. If hyung would just look at him. If he didn't sound so much like Joon-young.

"It was an experiment," Min says, stomach hollowing. How stupid of him, to have thought hyung liked it too. Stupid.

"Not like that." Hyung turns to him. "Oh, don't look like that. It's not the same. You also wanted to know if I could do it. You asked me to try and I did. It went well, right?"

"Did it?" Min mumbles, and slopes to the bathroom, standing in bare feet on the cold floor so he doesn't fall asleep while he brushes his teeth, so the roil in his stomach doesn't end in vomit swirling around the basin.

It's a strange, unruly confusion to think of the sex they've had lately. This morning was good and the evening was good, but they were so different. Hyung touched him differently, and Min doesn't know how to explain enough to ask about it. It was like when they were apart, a distance built into it, but some of the time it was as though hyung was there too, right there with him in how much he felt him. But Min's not sure if hyung was there after all. It didn't feel close the way last night felt close with hyung pressed against his back.

It felt more like Joon-young, observing.

Min doesn't want that to be true.

He comes out to put away his clothes and find drinks on the table and hyung reading a paper newspaper, folded in quarters by his plate the way their father used to.

It's a strange double image, hyung and their father, their father's slumped shoulders and hyung's fixed hair, the way hyung's cuffs ride smoothly on his forearms and how their father's cardigans always stretched out at the shoulders.

Min sits across from him. He used to sit beside their father, but these days he and hyung face each other across a table and words come easier to Min, even if often not the right ones. "That was phone sex," he says, serving himself from the jug. He doesn't know the word for the sex they have when they're together, when it's in person with flesh and shared sweat, but it wasn't this sex. This was a voice on the line, talking him into fantasies, for all that they had their hands and mouths on each other. He thinks the last blowjob wasn't phone sex, was close sex, sex because hyung wanted to and wanted him too, but that still leaves the rest. "Why?"

"I miss you," hyung says. "When we're apart. I miss you. I've never seen you in person when we talk like that. Now I have it to remember."

"That's not the whole reason." Min refuses to let himself be so easily soothed. He's too tired to accommodate hyung, to work up some kind of stretch to let what hyung tells him be the whole of what hyung doesn't say. This is different, a dividing line, a stopgap that shouldn't be left alone. Min doesn't know how, just that he thinks of it happening again and feels himself quail in a way he trained himself not to allow in front of Joon-young.

Hyung nods, that grimness pinching his face again. "You're right. I loved Sun-ho. What we have now is different because it has to be different, but necessity doesn't make it easier. This isn't easy for me. Not just because of who you are, but because I loved him too. I don't expect you to understand. It's fine if you don't."

Min tries to understand anyway. It's hyung, and Min wants to know everything about him even though it comes like this, stilted and sad. "You wanted to pretend."

"It helps to think that we are still like that, that you are also Sun-ho, that this is a fantasy. A taboo one, but the fantasy. Yes. He was a fantasy you sold me. I realise that." His smile is more a grimace, his eyes tightly wrinkled. "But I believed it and fell in love with it."

"I didn't think --"

"I know," hyung interrupts. "You didn't think it would hurt me. You thought I'd see through it, or I wouldn't like you. But that's not what happened. I wanted a little bit like we used to be. I wanted to know if that was the same."

He's not sure what to say. All of this feels like he's being led to a conclusion. He doesn't like it. "Was it?"

"It was. You're very good at compartmenting yourself." Hyung drags his hand over his mouth, elbow tucked into his side. It's the way Min's seen loved ones stand at funerals for his clients. "I don't necessarily want to go back and finish my obligations. But I think I need to. For this to ever work, you need to decide who you want to be. With your personality you can't do it while I'm here. You'll do what I want. You did what I wanted when I told you about the fantasies. That's not sustainable."

Oh. That's it, then. That's what he wants Min to believe.

"When are you leaving?" Min grips the glass tightly, holding in hurt. _You did what I wanted,_ hyung says, like he would've wanted Min to do anything else. Should Min not have liked it? But hyung liked it too. "You sound like you're leaving."

"The end of the week. In the morning. I loved him, Min." He sounds resolute. He looks it.

He thought he had more time. He thought they would have more time, and hyung is right, Min doesn't understand why hyung is doing this. He doesn't understand why this is his fault. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Hyung's lids flicker. "It means this is hard for me."

Min feels a smile paint itself into the corners of his mouth, the crevices of his teeth, until his jaw pops and his lips are stretched painfully tight. "Hard," he repeats. "For you."

"You don't have to go back to him," hyung says. "You have friends, family. They like you. They'll look after you. You won't be alone."

It's a particular kind of cold that settles in him now. Not the absence-aftermath when they're too far away from each other to finalise sex with touch into something Min can believe instead of only remembering. It's a kind like the wooden floor sinking its chill into his legs back then. Like sitting on the floor as a child, watching hyung, unconscious hyung, waiting for him to wake up. 

"Did you even bother to talk to your dean?" Min asks, painful through the rictus on his face. If smiling can make this better, he'll smile until his face splits and his skin peels back from his skull. "Or did you just propose a deal?"

Hyung keeps looking at his mouth, his eyes, back and forth. It's not sexy, only offputting. "We talked about the best path forward for my career. I'm allowed to prioritise myself in the short-term."

Min feels made of wood. He feels like a puppet, like his mouth would match the shape of a ventriloquist's wooden dummy if he bit into his upper lip and let it split. It's tempting. Splinters drive into his fingertips when he grips the table, but he manages not to bite anything, not even the air. "You're a coward." 

Hyung makes to speak. 

Min talks over him. "You said you fuck me because you want to. You said that in the car. You lied." 

It feels ruthless to talk like this. Practiced. It doesn't feel good like it used to. He wishes it felt good. But it only feels like pulling apart pieces of himself. Min has so few already. So little that's his. Everything is hyung's and everything is Joon-young's and he doesn't understand what people mean by _self_ , but surely this prickle, this splinter being pulled out of this clog in his throat, is something like it. Surely. It hurts to think. It hurts worse to say. Worst of all, it hurts that hyung might not listen. 

"You don't want me, hyung."

"That's not true. Do not confuse this with -- Min, I am not leaving because of this. I just think the time apart will make it easier for you to figure out what you want. To make your decisions. I want you to have time to think about it."

Min scoffs, not quite a laugh, not quite a sob, his hands flexing, and he thinks of the usual things, stalks in hyung's eyes, how he looks when he winces in pain. It's not enough this time, and he thinks of his mouth sagging open and drooling in death. He thinks of the hot flow of his blood and how the knife on the table would resist so stubbornly at first against his skin, then saw into his flesh. He thinks of how hyung might whimper, might decide to call him by his name and _mean it_ , finally, eventually, at the end. An end Min could drag out and drag out until Joon-young came calling and found Min triumphant.

"Min," hyung says. There's a wariness to the tick of muscle under his eye, his shoulders set straight and broad. It leaves his arms loose, his palms soft on the table like he might defend, or run, or fight. "What are you thinking?"

Hyung thinking Min will hurt him doesn't feel good even as he wants to press on it, make him cower, make him afraid. "Is there ever going to be a chance that you'll want to fuck me? Or is it all for Sun-ho?"

Hyung hesitates. "I was having sex with Sun-ho. Min is a different relationship. I told you, this isn't easy." He sounds impatient, a snap shaping his words. "I've never thought of myself as someone who would commit incest. Especially with you. That I didn't recognise you doesn't change what it was and it's something I have to come to terms with. I thought you understood that much."

"That means no," Min says. He's disappointed. He didn't mean to put himself in a position where he could be disappointed, but here he is. "Doesn't it?"

"Need I remind you? You haven't chosen. You asked for time to make the decision. You wanted the decision to be yours. Don't expect me to be happy about waiting for it. Don't expect me to adjust all at once. That's too much to ask of me."

Min sits back, wondering if it's possible to tire himself out just by imagining things too vividly. It feels like the last week has been a dream, one of those vague clinging nightmares. "So you're leaving."

Hyung sighs and waves his hand. "I am not leaving because I didn't like the roleplay. I did. Or because I can't learn to find you arousing. I am going because I have things to finish over there but I have a lot to think about. This time can be helpful in many ways and I think we should use it. I think you should."

"It's not roleplay." Min feels the words stick, has to pause to stretch his fingers, still aching with the old sprains, and shudder out a breath. "I wasn't pretending to be Sun-ho pretending to be Min. I wasn't, hyung. If it had happened, I would have done it." He can't say how he's so certain, only has the way he's always felt about hyung, how good it felt to touch him and be smiled at. To have a secret together, a closeness like a pinky swear, like the wrap of his hand around Min's naked hip when hyung blows him. It was that he missed the most, hated missing the most. The sense of him, close and approving and his. "You would have had me."

"Always?" hyung says softly, like he doesn't understand. "If I asked for you, in any case, at any time -- if I ever wanted it, you think you would have said yes? Wanted it?"

"Yes." Min's sure as he's ever been sure. Joon-young was all there was. But before that, there was hyung. All along, there was hyung. And now, too, there is hyung. "I thought you knew."

That gets him a long, slow breath and hyung sitting back. It's a ponderous thing, his hands loose on the tabletop, palms up like Min could put his hands in his grip and expect to be drawn in for a kiss. "You would have thought of me that way given time and exposure to the idea of sex at all. Is that it?"

Min doesn't know if to touch him. Hyung doesn't _look_ upset. He doesn't look like he did when he told Min he was leaving, just odd. "I found out about sex when I was six. I thought of you first."

"You _are_ fixated on me," hyung says. It's soft. His shoulders are hunched. "I thought it was my absence. I didn't realise it was present back then."

"I thought you knew," he says again. He feels deflated, the muscles of his face as tired as the rest of him, and hyung isn't giving him anything to -- to know how to feel about this truth. If it's terrible, if it's fine. If hyung can take it, or if this is something else hyung will have to swallow with too-careful phrases. "Is it too much?"

Hyung rubs his mouth. "I don't know. I wonder if it is my fault. I know I indulged you. But I don't know if that would have caused it, even with your particular personality. Some overarching trauma forming a bond between us, but other than our mother dying or our father being busy or both of those things, I don't know what could have been the trigger for that."

Min asks a question he's never asked. He's never particularly wanted to ask but it seems the right time for a lot of things Min's never considered possible. "Do you remember her death?"

"No," hyung says. "I don't think we were even there. I remember our father, I think. A little of it. I remember his body, and I remember losing you. I remember a very little of Joon-young, just his voice. I remember touching him somehow. But otherwise -- otherwise, no." He looks at Min. "Should I?"

"You were there," Min says. It sticks in his throat, but he forces it out. Even Min can learn to be something like generous. Like not scolding Ja-hee for her dirty socks back then. Or not breaking the rest of the chairs yesterday. "You don't have to remember."

"You do." It's not a question. It's easier that it's not, and hyung's face is wide open, serious and fixed on Min. "You remember everything."

Min nods, shifting in his chair. His drink doesn't look appetising anymore, but he sips to check that he can taste anything. It's faint, more an impression, but at least it's there. It's there, and this is real, and this is hyung. Hyung, who would feel -- would probably feel even worse about it than he did when he thought Min didn't want to have sex. Would probably do something drastic, like change his flight or cry. Would be hurt. It would hurt him to know. 

He doesn't want hyung hurt. Even with all this, the long habit of hating him, the way hyung still tests that fine line inside Min, that line Min knows to be the division between socially excusable assholery and things like what happened in Changwon. Even with that. He doesn't want the responsibility. He doesn't want to _be_ responsible for hurting hyung.

"It's better you don't." The cutlery feels stiff and strange in his hands, and he reaches for chopsticks instead. "It wasn't anything interesting."

" _It_ was our mother dying. Will you tell me?"

He could. The shades of blood in wine. The toy radio with its broad tuners, the English alphabet blocks in red and yellow and blue. The colour of her face after she bled out, the grey of the gun in hyung's hands. He could tell him about the man's shirt sticking to the floor and the way hyung shut his eyes when he pulled the trigger. The purple hyacinths. He could tell him. He could. _Our mother was murdered, you murdered her murderer in turn, and I saw everything. I heard everything. I felt everything. I remember everything._

He could.

"Murder scenes are all alike. Aren't they?" It's not important, the details. He could try to make hyung cower from him, could make hyung hate him back for a moment. He could tell him, he could, he could. But more than that is what hyung should know. What Min needs him to know. "I was always like this. My personality. The part where I'm yours. I was born like this."

"Min," hyung says slowly, brows drawing low. He has a face like a box of puzzle pieces, upended onto the floor in a cluster of shapes and easily-picked corners. "What does that mean?"

"Just what I said." Min drains his glass and gets up. Their father did this to their mother once, and he follows suit, bending to kiss hyung's forehead. "Don't think too hard."

"Who killed her?"

Min doesn't pause, picking up his tie from the nightstand. A little rumpled, but he can't feel any stains. It'll do, and he rolls it up it for tomorrow. "Nobody important. He's dead too."

Hyung rises to his feet. "There's no death penalty for home invasion. There's no -- I don't remember. Did I… I don't _remember._ Min, I don't remember. Will you please tell me?"

"You protected me," Min says, and he watches his frowning face, his hands shoved in his impractically large pockets, and has the want to go kiss him again. 

To call into work, tell them he's not coming tomorrow, and push hyung back into bed and strip him with his teeth and nails, the better to touch him and bite him and make him say his name. Both of them, if hyung insists, the better to think of how hyung looked when he woke after all that blood finished congealing on Min's slippers, his face soft and sweet and his confused presence easy to keep down with just a touch to his shoulder, a _it's not good out there, hyung._

Hyung used the phone in the room to call the police, and the police called their father's office, and they waited together, he and hyung, in that study with their father's briefcase and their father's gun. Min held it while hyung slept, just for a few minutes. It felt right in its molded edges, the cold circle of the trigger. Soothing. 

But his hands were too small to fire it like hyung fired it, and there was no target other than hyung who protected him, and he put it back in the briefcase. 

If only recoil would work now to make hyung fall down and forget. Hyung's a grown man these days, with a grown man's cock and a grown man's constitution and broad hands. Min misses when he had to balance on his toes to look hyung in the eyes. 

"Come to bed, hyung."

He doesn't understand most things, but he understands that these are the choices, that it's Min's turn now, that whatever else, this is the clarity he has left: Min owes a debt to hyung twenty years overdue.

Joon-young would understand if Min told him about houses and homes and the way hyung's hand feels in his own.

Min doesn't intend to give Joon-young the chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter should be a lot of Joon-young and Min and Eun-bok dynamics, at least as the concept I'm currently working on. I can't guarantee when it'll be posted, unfortunately, but please know it's in active writing.
> 
> Let me know what you think, I welcome any and all comments, always and forever to the end of time!


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